To be rich is to be happy

To be truly rich is to have all the things that you need to be happy and sustain happiness. If you're lonely, despite having oodles of money, it's difficult to say that you're truly wealthy. Of course, money is often necessary to indulge the needs of your body, but it's not enough to satisfy the higher wants (e.g., love, contentment, self-esteem, cognitive-intellectual growth, security, living with someone your equal or greater than you are) of the soul. Well, the matter is really nothing complicated. If you're not completely rich, then you're not rich at all. Money is very important, all right. It may not be everything, yet it's something. But, again, it's not a sufficient, much less necessary, condition to be rich and happy.
Here's what Conrado de Quiros (2002) said on the matter:

"To be rich is to be replete with possibility. To be rich is not just to have money in your pockets, as the idiom goes, though that is a marvelous thing enough. Heaven knows having a pocket full of holes, which is the other idiom to describe being broke, is often literal thing in itself. But you may not have money in your pockets and still be rich. Most rich do not. Only the noveau riche do. In these days of miracle and wonder, to use Paul Simon's phrase, to have money in your pockets is no longer to be rich, it is to be cheap.

"To be rich is to know that nothing is impossible. To be rich is to know that you can go around any obstacle, go under or over any obstacle, go through any obstacle. It is to know that when you want money, you can lay your hands on it. It is to know that when you need people, you can get in touch with them. It is to know that when you want something done, you can get it done.

"To be poor on the other hand, is to be assailed by impossibility. It is to be thwarted at every turn by the improvident hand of man or God-or fate. It is to have obstacle after obstacle put in your path until you no longer see the goal, until you no longer know there is a goal, until you learn only to toil to get past the obstacle you wake up to each day at crack of dawn. It is literally to have no one to turn to." (In Quezon, M.L. III (ed.). 20 Speeches that Moved a Nation. Pasig: Anvil Publishing. pp.113-114)

So, that's it. It's possible to be rich even if you're not moneyed. This reminds me of the story of a philosopher who lived in a barrel. One day, the king came by and asked the barrel philosopher if he needs anything. The barrel philosopher whose intellectual reverie was interrupted replied, "Please stand aside my King; you're blocking the sunlight."

There's nothing bad of course about being both rich and moneyed. For related post see Are you rich?