People mix up those 2 words! Do you think people in the world are happier than 50 years ago? Money can't buy Happiness is it true? Well, as promised in "The Beginning" I will pour some of my thought around Happiness and Truth as stated under the title of this Blog. Here we go!
To satisfy you... according to Richard Layard (writer of Happiness: Lessons from a New Science) the world is not happier than 50 years ago, even though the world have more & more rich people! Money can’t buy happiness True? Yes... but we all act as if we’d be happier with a bit more money, we are conditioned to want to be rich (even when we know the rich aren’t happy either), we all want the latest gadget, we want to earn more money because then we’ll have the good life. Why this is happening? (Just a note according to some studies at least basic needs need to be fulfilled even some give some minimum income per year, for common sense I agree but I think it is not completely true).
My personal answer based on what I see around and read are:
1. People confuse about Happiness and Satisfaction
2. Happiness is measured with success, power & influence (money is lingering between those 3)
Weird? yeah I will give some extreme example to explain it.
When you able to take some revenge to someone who wrong you, when you beat your competitor with "all means necessary", when you doing "it" with a whore, when you able to scold & explode your emotion, when you able put someone "in the corner", able to buy expensive stuff & gadget, you fell satisfaction not happiness actually. As the word itself satisfaction means fulfilling a desire or need or appetite, so scolding, revenge are fulfilling wrath desire, the whore & expensive thing are fulfilling a lust desire and so on.
Most of the people confuse about these two, because both happiness and satisfaction have some same element: Joy. I'm not trying to be a linguist here, but these are true, we all experienced this feeling. Perhaps with some more example, it will more clearer, happiness usually happen when you see your first born child, when you are among your old friends after 10 years never met, finding peace in a prayer, cured from deadly disease, able to help other people (in spontaneous situation), giving blood to local blood bank.
What is the different? Perhaps some explanation I can do are, happiness do not feed on other people sorrow that for sure, nor your desire, no hidden agenda, not self centered and you can guess too that happiness have a strong correlation with peace.
Ok another example, holding your healthy firstborn baby is happiness, but seeing your son graduate from reputable university with high score is not happiness it is a satisfaction, but you can shed tear too in that moment, to be exact it usually come from pride.
I across this sentence while browsing and quote it in Facebook before “That funny statement, is only funny because it’s somewhat true. The reason people want whatever is currently “hot” is because they believe it will contribute towards their satisfaction and happiness in life. The word “believe” is the key here. People believe that buying more and more things will make them happy, when in fact research has shown time and time again that this simply isn’t the case.” To be exact, buying “hot” things indeed bring satisfaction either for their pride for showing, or lust for just being have that thing or other selfish reason but not happiness.
Although happiness is an emotion, we can select it when we choose it regardless the situation, but I know you will need a very discipline mind to do so. Satisfaction in other hand have a set of standard and goal, if not fulfilled satisfaction will not happen.
So what we can do?
We all have a wonderful gift; in fact we are the only species in this earth able to self examining, so learn yourself, ask what is important in your life (but unselfish one) and seek your true happiness.
Some other words I can share this time to enhance your happiness :
Learn to think positive, accept differentiation, stop asking fairness (I will write about this in the future), find some little happiness here and there (looking through the window and see a mountain view in my old office bring me happiness) and find your meaning, what you can do in this world which you start from yourself.
Note:
Watching the end of Battlestar Galactica really give me some thought about happiness and materialism and inspire me to write this blog, so this one is my tribute to that wonderfull TV series.
Feel free to share your thoughts too.
"Knowing the path is not the same as walking the path"
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