The Trade-off Between Love and Money: What to Go For?

While answering a question written by Bredavies titled “Would you choose love or money?”, I was denied submission of the answer as it was too long to fit as an answer. I decided to make it a hub instead inspired by the question of Bredavis.

I do not think both 'love' and 'money' are substitutes to each other. Both elements serve different purposes. Life is not about choosing either in a trade-off. Love is something not everyone can withstand. Its a gift and if one is gifted with it, no one can take it away from you, not even you yourself. Its a painful pleasure that not everyone can enjoy. I hope, by 'love' you mean the the feeling of belonging to some other entity which is beyond the scope of physical attraction and have no relation at all to get any physical pleasure from some other entity. It is that feeling of belongingness that can motivate you to sacrifice yourself even without any reciprocal return. No one tries to be in love. People only fall in love without doing anything about it. Thus, being in love may be one of the most unpredictable thing that can happen to one's life. People who are in love are irrational in conventional ways of understanding rationality. A person in love is always ready for the supreme sacrifice with a smiling face for the sake of one's own village, country, another human being or any thing else. It is something that is not even confined to human beings. I have read about a dog sacrificing his life to a leopard for the saving his little master even when the dog might be aware of his own strengths vis-a-vis a leopard. It has nothing to do with the functioning of the brain. The feeling of love works at a level beyond the capacity of brain (or may be at a level where the brain functions beyond the social programming one has during training of life). Life itself becomes meaningless when one is in love. There is no known methods to get the feeling of love. No strategy would get you love. So, do not go for it. The moment you get it, you cease to be a rational human being. You an never lose love also as there is no antidote ever created against love. So even if you are in love, go for money if you wish so. Quoting Eliot;

“Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding (1942) Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Four_Quartets

On the other hand, money is just a medium of exchange that helps us purchasing anything and everything that is traded for money. It is extremely necessary for surviving and it can be obtained through trading our labour, power of the brain and anything that has a market value of satisfying the needs of life. If you want money, you have to do something to get it. Strategies do work here and the more money you have the more needs of yours can be satisfied.

Finally, since you can not get love through efforts, but you can get money through efforts, the two are not substitutes to each other. If one is already in love, there is no harm if she goes after money to satisfy her other earthly needs. Love is such a programme at a metaphysical level that whenever there is a conflict between love and money, love wins and money becomes worthless and earthly NEEDs never remain NEEDs vis-a-vis love.