The Elusive Nature of Happiness: Exploring Our Endless Pursuit to “Just be Happy”

We are sold this dream that we should all be happy all the time, and if we're not, there's something wrong with us. Any state that is not raving glee is met with pills and therapy. It's big business.

The happiness industry of self-help books, motivational speakers, and ‘wellness’ products and anti-depressants is approaching trillion-dollar status. But have any of these endless “solutions” made us any happier?

Have you noticed that it doesn't matter what we achieve or get, the euphoria is short-lived? Before long, we’re bored, restless, agitated, angry, hungry all over again.

That promotion we worked so hard for? The excitement fades within weeks. The dream house we saved years to buy? It becomes just another place we live in. The relationship we thought would complete us? It comes with its own set of challenges and disappointments.

This of course makes us feel guilty for not being grateful for what we get and achieve. It leaves us confused and hollow; and after enough wins, jaded. We're told to practice gratitude, to appreciate what we have, but it feels forced. We wonder why we can't sustain that initial burst of joy, why our achievements feel increasingly hollow.

After a few dozen cycles of this game, we start to realize that something is off, achieving anything anymore feels futile and it just all starts to feel mechanical. It's as if we're trapped in a hamster wheel of desire and satisfaction, always running but never really getting anywhere. We set goals, achieve them, feel a brief moment of elation, and then it's on to the next thing.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

So what's going on here? Why can't we stay happy?

We keep doing the same thing over and over with the occasional ups and downs, not appearing to get anywhere. I picture it as a ping pong ball in water. If left alone, it floats. But if you pull it under water deep enough, it will bounce right out and fly a bit before landing. Those are the highs and lows we experience, then settle back to a base water level. That level I guess would be different for everyone.

It is believed that this pattern comes from our caveman days. If our ancestors remained content after finding a good source of food, they might not have been motivated to continue hunting or gathering, leaving them vulnerable in times of scarcity. Hence, they moved on to new hunting grounds and new pursuits. Not much has changed it seems.

Fast forward to the modern world where basic needs are more common, this survival technique works against us. We constantly strive for more, never satisfied with what we have. It's the engine that powers endless consumerism, career ambition, and relationship hopping.

Are we just victims of our primitive brains?

The constant barrage of carefully curated highlight reels from others' lives certainly doesn't help. We're constantly comparing our behind-the-scenes to everyone else's life highlight reel, feeling inadequate and unfulfilled in the process.

Technology and social media moving at breakneck speeds is scattering us because we are simply not designed to evolve that fast. We cannot keep up as human beings.

Who do we think we really are? Where did we really come from? What are we really doing here? Why don't we talk about these things more? Existential questions like these have plagued philosophers and thinkers for millennia.

Our lightning fast, consumerist, work driven society rarely gives us time to ponder these deeper questions of existence. We're too busy chasing the next dopamine hit, the next achievement, the next purchase that we think will finally make us happy.

So many people are in pure survival mode. They are simply not able to ask these existential questions when they don't even know where their next meal is coming from. But if our basic needs are met, it gives room to ask the deep stuff.

This is perhaps the great irony of our time – more people than ever before have their basic needs met, yet we’re too busy chasing our tails to grapple with the questions of meaning and purpose.

It's no wonder most of us are miserable.

Eventually becoming aware of our surroundings takes us down a long rabbit hole. Once we do start questioning the nature of happiness and the purpose of our endless pursuits, it's hard to stop. We might begin to wonder about the structures of our society, the nature of consciousness, the meaning of life itself. And we should.

But this questioning and awareness is the key to breaking free from the treadmill. By understanding the mechanisms at play, we can start to make more conscious choices about what we pursue and why. We need to think about what we’re thinking about.

How can we find lasting contentment in a world that seems designed to keep us perpetually unsatisfied?

It going to take time.

1) Recognise that fleeting happiness based on external achievements or acquisitions is not the same as long-term life satisfaction or well-being.

True well-being comes from a combination of factors: meaningful relationships, a sense of purpose, personal growth, and contribution to something larger than ourselves. Watch the movie Groundhog Day for a great example of this.

2) We can practice mindfulness and present-moment awareness. We can teach ourselves to think about what we’re thinking.

By learning to appreciate the here and now, we can reduce our tendency to always be chasing the next thing. This doesn't mean we stop setting goals or striving for improvement, but rather that we learn to find joy in the journey, not just the destination.

We can learn to observe our thoughts and watch ourselves making odd decisions based on our existing thought patterns. That awareness of what we’re thinking can help us change those thoughts, create new thoughts. This is how we slowly evolve from our primitive brains.

3) We can focus on experiences rather than material possessions.

There’s enough research showing that spending money on experiences tends to bring more lasting happiness than buying things. Experiences become part of our identity and provide lasting memories, while material possessions quickly become part of the background of our lives.

Plus it leaves a whole lot of junk for someone else to sort out when we leave this dear planet.

4) We can cultivate gratitude, not as a forced exercise, but as a genuine appreciation for what we have.

This doesn't mean ignoring problems or settling for less than we deserve, but rather recognizing the good in our lives even as we work towards improvement. We can learn to say thank you more often about more things, saying it even if no one is around. So even if your dog gets off the chair so you can sit down, say thank you.

5) We can engage with those big existential questions.

Instead of running from them or drowning them out with distractions, we can embrace the mystery of existence. We can find meaning in the search itself, in the discussions and explorations of what it means to be human.

Wouldn’t it be so much more fulfilling to discuss the meaning of life with your friends instead of moaning about other people? We might actually start finding solutions to these questions then.

In the end, perhaps the key to happiness isn't in achieving a constant state of joy, but in finding peace with the ebb and flow of our emotions. It's about creating a life that feels meaningful and authentic to us, not one that looks good on social media or meets society's definition of success. We need to go back to some basics.

The pursuit of happiness doesn't have to be a futile hamster wheel. It's not about being happy all the time, but about finding contentment and making peace with the lows in this beautiful mess that is human existence.