"Does Money get you Love and Respect?"

"Does Money get you Love and Respect?" this was a very interesting question that was raised in the Lunchroom leading to a very intense and passionate discussion. Which in turn lead me to question myself, does money really get you love and respect? As an experiment I sent a mail with the same question to the entire office and asked the same to a couple of friends in order to get their point of view. The replies were very interesting and insightful. They ranged from simple ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ to some with an explanation for their answer and not to forget a nice Marathi poetry to drive home the point.
There were many who felt that money did get you love and respect, and why not? In an idealistic world money may not get you love and respect. But in reality does this hold true? There are so many instances in our daily lives where money helps us win the love and respect that we want and crave for. Money is like a flame that burns brighter when you have it in plenty, attracting a lot of moths and insects. Snuff it off or dim its intensity and most of these moths and insect would leave it for other brighter flames.
What I gathered from experience and from all these replies is that money is an important factor in life. There are couple of instances in our daily lives to prove this point. Take, for example, the recently concluded talent show Indian Idol. Before being crowned an Indian Idol Abhijeet Sawant was just another face in the crowd, a person from a financially backward background. One would care less even to get to know him better. But now that he has won the competition everyone is clamouring to get a slice of his fame. From the usual distant relatives (who were previously unheard of) to the newly discovered friends and neighbours, even teachers and the normally opposing parents of his love interest, all suddenly want to be recognised through him.
This is just one example. Another would be when parents look out for prospective spouses for their children. They would definitely be looking at candidates who are financially stable or even well off. To be frank, which parent would want their daughter to marry into a family who are at lower financial strata than they are, or their sons marry a girl from a poor family? Such relationships are often met with great opposition and the child is often dissuaded from going ahead with marriage. And even if the marriage does go through there would have to hear accusations like you married my child for their money.
The best example I could give to support my view is our habit of giving and receiving gifts to/from our loved ones, parents, siblings, lovers, spouses, children, friends, bosses, colleagues. Why do we do so? Because we want to show how much we appreciate them being part of our lives and that we care about them. But don’t we also give presents to win over angry spouses and girlfriends, to bosses so that they can keep us in mind during promotions and reviews, to employees so they would be content with their jobs and respect the management. When a guy tries to woo a girl he sends all the best presents and flowers to try to impress her and win her heart. Wouldn’t a couple words like ‘I love you’ or ‘I like you’ do? When you’ve forgotten those important occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, or have gotten into an argument, how do you get out of this sticky situation? Simple buy her a beautiful (and expensive) present or take her out to a beautiful (and once again expensive) restaurant to get her back. Why wouldn’t a simple sorry do? Forgotten to say good-bye to your child in the morning before leaving for work then promise to get her them something special when you return in the evening. This also includes birthdays or whenever you want them to pass their exams with flying colours or you want to bribe them to keep a secret. And then who doesn’t like to receive, especially present. I know I would be utterly disappointed if I didn’t receive presents for my birthday. It would make me feel that no one loves or cares for me. If anyone got a present for my sister and not me (especially from my dad when he returned from Dubai) it would definitely leave a feeling of being unloved or uncared for.
But can we call this love and attention and respect TRUE? What happens when we have no money to spend or to give presents and go out on romantic dinners? A colleague of mine once told me that if you do not respect someone mentally then you do not respect the person at all, no matter how much you try to show you respect that person. Can we apply the same assumption in case of love? Whom or what is being loved here? Is it the individual or the individual with the cash? The truth is this is love but not true love. All these people are fair weather friends. One sign of trouble and they are ready you to dump you for safer and more promising pastures. Their love and respect is definitely not true because they do not love you for who you are but for the cash that you have.
Well whatever is our point of view truth is that money influences our life greatly, knowingly or unknowingly. We all reach our opinion after our own experience, both good and bad, and I respect (truly) you for that.
A big thanks for all those who replied to my mail or talk the time to give me their point view. If I offended anyone then I am sorry. This little article is not meant to change your point of view, its just putting down what I felt about the topic after reading and listening to all the replies to the question. Once again thank you. I would like to end by just saying that if you love and respect somebody do it from your heart and really mean it.