Is The Pursuit Of Happiness Making Us Sad?

Never in human history have we all been so connected, phones, internet and social media they all tell us how we all have more friends and live more fulfilled lives. We have everything we need to know at our fingertips and rarely need to go anywhere to research a topic, it’s all there on our teeny tiny phones.

Now we know about meditation, kindness, we have thousands… no millions of images that are designed to make us laugh or at least smile. Surely we are happier than we have ever been. We open up our emails and it’s full of offers from people and companies to help you live a happier, healthier life.

So why do we have an epidemic of loneliness, more so than at any other time in history?

We sit in front of our screen waiting to be entertained or informed, we talk to people without speaking, we just walk away from a conversation if it gets too awkward. All of this technology is not bringing us closer together it’s isolating us.

Then there’s the spiritual information that we turn to when we need to feel better about ourselves, THEY (?) tell us that we should look inside ourselves for our happiness, that if you chant three times a day miraculous things will happen. Meditate daily, melt your stress away. Give them money and they’ll teach you the secrets to happiness. Always remember happiness is an industry.

Okay, so whilst all of things may momentarily relieve your loneliness and your stress, in the long run you are just isolating yourself even more by turning in on yourself.

We need human contact to feel real happiness, we need to see a smile grow on someone’s face, a smile that we have put there. So how about this for an idea…

Once you’ve meditated, checked your emails and chatted to your friends over social media. Turn the computer/phone off and go out and research something in a library, go to a coffee shop, meet people, chat. That’s what will make you really happy, it’ll create memories that will make you smile beyond the outing. Be grateful you have the ability to do these things before we are electronically taken over trying to discover ways to be happy.

With thanks to Newstalk for the image.

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