A million dollars or knighthood

Recently a friend of mine asked me a question, what would you choose between a million dollars or knighthood and why? He needed to answer the question for his application in one of the business school. His motives were altogether different from mine; however, the question got me thinking. This is what I came up with for an answer:

To be very honest my answer to this question has changed a couple of time since I first read the question. In retrospect when I analyze my thoughts I find that my answer has gone through four distinct stages to reach the final conclusion.

The first thought that crossed my mind after reading the question was, “Can’t I have both a million dollars and knighthood!”. I think that’s a typical self-indulgent answer, though if you look at it deeply, it has some traces of honesty to it. However, I cannot go with it since it would be silly to break the rule of choosing just one option. Isn’t it?

Having rejected my first answer, I started making choices as I always do. In this mode “a choice between a million dollars and the knighthood” was no different from other popular choices like Coke or Pepsi, physics or mathematics, Godfather the book or Godfather the movie. I chose a million dollar, and why? Probably, I like being rich more than being famous, or it’s just the first option I always go for, which is quite evident from my liking for Coke, physics and Godfather the book. Even so, I cannot go with this answer as it is completely based on my whim.

In search for more concrete logic, I did some research comparing numbers of millionaires and people with knighthood in the last decade, and found knighhood to be a rarer breed. While this is true, people with knighthood are already millionaires in almost all of the cases. This leaves me with only one logical choice of opting for knighthood.

Having decided on knighthood gave me a temporary satisfaction of supporting my choice with some solid research and logic. But, soon enough I realized that I still need to go with my first instinct, however, this time the prize (both million dollars and knighhood, or anything for that matter) has to be acquired with hard work and intelligent thinking. I know the answer is still self-indulgent (a bit boring also), but no more silly. Probably, the answer is based on my long time belief that it’s the journey that matters and not the destination.