It’s the age-old question: does money buy happiness?
Many argue it can’t, while others argue it most certainly can. Most recently some researchers agree it can buy at least a form of happiness or happiness frequency.
Based on that argument, many celebrities, especially those who are among the highest paid, should be the happiest people on the planet.
But that’s far from the truth.
Will Smith recently appeared on Kevin Hart’s talk show Hart to Heart and explained how even though his family achieved monumental success between 2010 and 2012, they were far from being happy.
During his sit down with Hart, the 54-year-old declared 2010 the “greatest year as an artist,” however “nobody in my family was happy.”
“Pretty much 2010 to 2012 I had achieved everything I had ever dreamed,” he said.
“It was my first realization that success and money don’t mean happiness,” Smith acknowledged. “Up until that point, I really believed that you could succeed your way to a house and a family and that you could win your way to happiness.”
Not only was Smith’s career doing extremely well, but his children’s careers were beginning to take off.
Jaden, now 25, had starred in The Karate Kid, and Willow, now 22, had released her debut single “Whip My Hair.”
Smith said it was his daughter Willow who was the first one to begin the “mutiny.”
In 2018, Willow admitted that after the release of her single – she was nine at the time – she struggled with her mental health.
“I would have to say I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point,” she said. “It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?’”
“After all of that kind of settled down, I was listening to a lot of dark music and it was just so crazy and I was just plunged into this black hole and I was, like, cutting myself and doing crazy things,” she revealed during an episode of her mother Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Red Table Talk.
“I definitely had to forgive you and daddy for that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing,” Willow told her mother.
“It was mostly daddy, because he was so harsh at certain times. It was a couple of years, honestly — trying to regain trust for not feeling like I was being listened to or like no one cared how I felt.”
READ MORE:
- Chris Rock, Will Smith finally break silence on infamous Oscars slap
- Will Smith’s daughter Willow Smith opens up about being polyamorous
Does money buy happiness? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.