Are we getting less happy?

SGGP November 26, 2023 09:04

When I was a child, every time my mother went to the market, I was at home restless, waiting for her to come home.

Sometimes, my mother just bought us a lollipop, a donut or a package of sticky rice, and we, as children, were excited and happily running around the yard, our eyes sparkling with happiness.

When I was a child, every time Tet came, I was so excited, counting down the days until the calendar was worn out. Going to school, I just wanted time to pass quickly so I could have a vacation. Every time Tet came, my mother took me to the market to buy me a new set of clothes and shoes, cherishing and preserving every bit of them. When Tet came, I dressed up and showed off to the whole village.

Every summer afternoon, picking up a pair of worn-out sandals to exchange for an ice cream or some taffy, gathering around to eat them would make the whole group excited and cheer loudly. I remember every afternoon, in the vast rice fields, a few children gathered to catch grasshoppers, crickets, fish, crabs, then played tops, hopscotch, jump rope, and hide-and-seek. The cheers and laughter echoed throughout the fields. I remember the days when I was a child, that happiness was so simple.

Then we grow up, our parents get older, life is more comfortable, we can buy expensive delicacies, beautiful clothes and shoes. But we can't find the same feeling of excitement and happiness as when we were young. Is it because our busy life with full amenities makes us feel like that? Is it because the definition of happiness changes as we get older?

Some people think that it is due to each person's expectations, the higher the expectations, the lower the possibility of happiness. We now depend on social networks, where our friends are always "top", eating delicious food, checking in at luxurious places, doing extraordinary things... making us feel like we are inferior and useless. Our expectations are too influenced by the achievements of others, making us feel like failures. We always feel deprived, need to buy more, have more... and in the end, we feel unhappy when we cannot "buy the whole world ".

Many young people today are different from us back then, they think more about finding happiness. But when thinking about what to do to make ourselves happy, it becomes harder to achieve it because the time spent thinking about happiness, basically does not help us become happier. In a life where everyone has to struggle with the cycle of material things and money, few people feel happy anymore.

After all, happiness is a state of mind, so it can only be found in the mind, that is, within each person. A part of young people today, due to changes in the social environment, increasingly tend to seek happiness through external factors (delicious food, beautiful clothes, fame, traveling around the world, falling in love with hot boys, hot girls...) instead of looking at purely spiritual values, so it will be more difficult for them to have true happiness.

Source