by Joseph Kelley

Created on: November 19, 2008

My father always told me that money cannot buy you happiness. How could that be true? I always thought, you are working 60 hours a week at a job you hate. You are supporting a wife and three kids at home along with your parents across town. The only other thing you do besides work is spend time at home with your family. You never go out with friends or go to social occasions. How can you possibly be happy?

Even though he said he enjoyed his life, for the first 18 years of mine I was under the impression that my father was an unhappy man. I did not want to be like him, I did not want to get married or have kids. I did not want to work in a job field that I hated. I wanted all of my hard earned money to go to me so I could be happy with my personal wealth. I geared my high school studies in that same direction, I came to college with that plan in mind, and I even geared my life in that way. Never had I thought that I could be mistaken, that there is something that I was missing. Some key fact to his life that I did not see. But that fact quickly came in to focus.

In high school I never really had a steady relationship, quite possibly because I never made the time for someone else in my life. Between school, Boy Scouts, and a few extra-curricular activities I had just enough time for my self. By the time orientation came around for college I was entirely focused on one thing and that was my career. I had dreams of money, big houses, nice cars, a steady job, my own restaurant. But all those dreams quickly disappeared when I met her.

Our first date was amazing, we talked about what we wanted to do with our lives, different things about our selves, and we enjoyed each others company. It wasn't until this moment that I realized what my father meant when he said he was happy. Being happy wasn't about having tons of money and being worry free. It was about being around, and spending time with people that you care about. It was about personal sacrifice so others can have a good life as well. This single thought changed everything about me, who I was, what I've done, what I was going to do. It changed me from an introvert to an extrovert only in a few months. Suddenly having wealth and being successful were not important any more. Actually I would say it is no longer relevant in how my life works out. For the first time in my life the only thing I was concerned with was someone else. She was me, she completed who I was, and she made me happy even when I was sad. Never before

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