I guess I would say true happiness is to love and be loved. Of course, having enough money for food, shelter, health care and things like that all help, but that is more about security.

Security isn't happiness, connection is

There's a helpful distinction buried here that we often get backward: the stuff we chase hardest—money, status, comfort—isn't actually what makes us happy. It's the baseline. Money stops your suffering when you don't have enough, but once you're secure, chasing more of it becomes a hollow project if love isn't also there. It's like trying to enjoy a meal when you're eating alone and nobody cares how it tastes.

What's tricky about this is that security and love require very different kinds of effort. Security comes from achievement and accumulation—things you can measure and check off. Love requires vulnerability, time, and the willingness to be changed by another person. So we often pour all our energy into the first one because it feels productive, concrete, quantifiable. But the payoff is smaller than we thought.

The real insight isn't that money doesn't matter—it absolutely does. It's that once you have enough to breathe, the returns flatten out. The real multiplier is connection. A person with modest security and deep relationships tends to be genuinely happy. A person with wealth and isolation usually isn't, no matter how much they tell themselves otherwise. That's worth thinking about when you're deciding where to focus your finite attention.