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The Duchess of Windsor must have believed money brought happiness to anyone who had it. She was supposedly fond of saying, "You can never be too rich or too thin."

The happiest couple I know earn perhaps $24,000 a year between them. In a few years, they'll both be old enough for Social Security. He works as an elementary school teacher. She used to be one, too, until illness left her unable to work except for occasional tutoring. They've lived in the same mobile home for more than 25 years and drive a 14-year-old Buick. Their last vacation was more than 10 years ago, when they drove out of state for a relative's funeral. Almost everybody who knows them envies their sunny dispositions. In a word, they're content.

The most miserable person I've met is the owner of a small software company he founded about eight years ago. In addition to his business, he has a red-hot Mercedes convertible, four other vehicles and a third wife. The two of them live by themselves in a million-dollar home they bought brand new right after they tied the knot. Every couple of months, they set out on an exotic vacation to pursue their hobby, photography. Although by anyone's standards, they're loaded, they're just too miserable to stay home and face everyday life. No matter how much money they have, they probably will never be happy.

My guess is that for every dozen happy people you encounter in life, a few will be wealthy, a couple will be relatively poor and most will be somewhere in the middle.

By midlife, it becomes obvious to many that happiness is largely a decision to be content with life as it is and as it's likely to be. To most observers, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch and his family were affluent. Pausch was already a noted lecturer and eternal optimist when he learned he was terminally ill at 46 with pancreatic cancer. When he delivered his famous "Last Lecture" watched on the Internet by more than 10 million individuals, he already had been told he had just months to live. In addition to his wife, he had three pre-schoolers at home.

What seemed to astonish individuals who followed Pausch's journey until his death on July 25, 2008 was how content he was to relish the time he had left on this earth. He lived with a passion and came across as genuinely courageous rather than bitter or even particularly angry. He made the conscious decision to be content with the hand that life had dealt him.

In the "Last Lecture" book he authored, he told the story of a trek to the supermarket, where he attempted to charge his groceries in a self-serve checkout lane. It was obvious the scanner charged his credit card twice. After pausing to consider the extra charge, he decided he could at that point in life afford it and elected to just hop into his car and go home to spend as much time as possible with his family.

In the end, the book deal he brokered, supposedly worth more than $6 million, could not buy any miracle treatment or even any more time for Randy Pausch. By anyone's standards, at least for a few months, he was a wealthy man. But it was happiness and living each moment as a gift, not wealth, that filled his final days with dignity.

Learn more about this author, Vonda Sines.
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