
Lesson for the Day: Money does not give meaning to life. Rather, at the most, money is the means to living a good life. The unhappy person confuses the means, which is money, with the end, which is a meaning.
“For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”
Source: Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism, rev. ed. (New York, N.Y.: Washington Square Press, 1978, Washington Square Press ed. 1985), p. 21. Italics are the publisher’s.