Pursuit of Material Wealth

Material wealth brings happiness and joy to people, allowing people to be freed from financial issues. However, one may not know that the pursuit of material wealth is taking a huge risk and may bring about much harm to a person, a family or even the whole community. In my opinion, the material wealth will cause detrimental effects to a person, should a person pursuit material wealth. Therefore, the pursuit of wealth is not the most important thing in life.

Skirting some of the issues, the pursuit of material wealth will lead to an endless desire of a particular want and finally, emotional poverty. One example is the pursuit of branded goods with the snob appeal. Many women would crave for lavish bags such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel and many others. Unsatisfied, these women would yearn for more and more of such branded goods of an even higher price each time they buy. In a similar way, the pursuit for money is endless. Slowly, this leads to an obsession as money is the only goal that people will aim to achieve. Also, cool gadgets, the latest and best techno-gizmo, trendy clothes the newest fashion has been the hot choice of teenagers’ pursuit. Such pursuit has been brought about by advertisements and peer pressure, just to name a few. A materialistic lifestyle will bring much unhappiness and discomfort to people as the goal of pursuit for a need will always be etched on the person’s mind, never going away. Therefore, the pursuit of material wealth will lead to an endless desire and eventually emotional poverty.

In addition, the pursuit of material wealth also causes interpersonal relationships among people to suffer. The Straits Times reported recently that an ex-bank executive, Winnie Goh Li Ching, 33, was charged of conspiring with housing agents to cheat OCBC over $61 million housing loans scams. This shows that the greed for high end properties like housing and cars are the drive for people’s desire. To obtain such material wealth, people will try and obtain it through all means. In the above example, Winnie would have not only lost her job, but also the trust and she had built with her fellow colleagues. Eventually, her friends and family, would also look down upon her and the relationships she have with them may turn sour in the end. Therefore the pursuit of material wealth causes interpersonal relationships to suffer.

Material wealth does play an important part in our daily lives. Material wealth helps us to pay, among other things grocery, mortgage, children’s education, utility bills or even housing loans. Acquisition of material wealth is very important as it could be of a huge help in survival, the quality of life and may bring success to an individual, a family or even to the whole society. However, the over acquisition of material wealth will lead to the pursuit of material wealth, which in turns bring detrimental effects like emotional poverty and how interpersonal relationships will suffer. Hence, it cannot be said that the pursuit of wealth is the most important in life.

Overall, instead of the pursuit of material wealth, one should go for non-material wealth and that is spending more quality time with their family and friend. In my opinion, the pursuit of material wealth is endless and this causes us to lose our purpose in life, not only does it affect a person’s emotional state but also causes relationships to suffer, therefore, the pursuit of material wealth is not the most important thing in life.