What is happiness anymore? We constantly are taking shortcuts in our lives, shortcuts even to happiness – we use instant gratification, consumption, and material goods to fill up that ache of emptiness. We constantly feel the need to feel full, to feel complete. But what defines completion? Is it when you have no more room for anything else, or that you have everything you need and no longer want anything else? I think that happiness is needed for this feeling of completion, but what is happiness? When we do find happiness, I think we hug onto it too tightly, and strangle it – we don’t let it be free, and open. We want to train happiness, make it do tricks for us and put it in a wire cage where we can poke wires into it and measure its heartbeat. But even then, we would still question it. We would still analyze every part of this happiness, until it no longer exists, and even our memories can barely grasp its reality. In today’s world, I wonder what happiness is. We grow up thinking that happiness is shopping or happiness is blissfully staring at a plasma television. But all of these things are material, they are artificial, and we have scammed ourselves into relying on them for ‘happiness’.
We create and consume so much that I believe we get so caught up in everything around us and forget what makes us really smile. Maybe it was when your friend accidentally tripped on her shoelace. Or maybe it was when you laughed so hard milk came out of your nose. We take so much for granted; and this leads to the oblivion I see so often around me. I feel so guilty sometimes for everything I have, all of my clothes and items. But I think that I can’t live without these things, but I know that in reality I could, that there are others out there who do live without these things. We are taught to live without our cell phones, without our ipods, we tell ourselves this so much that soon we believe it to be true. The more we consume, the more complicated things get, and the more troublesome our lives become. So how can we stop this monster we have created, and somehow achieve happiness along the way?