Sorry Happiness, You’re Not Enough Anymore

It’s not you, it’s me (looking for a better answer).

If you were to ask the person closest to you, “What do you want in life?,” I’d be willing to bet $2 (please, I’m in university, what more did you expect?) that their answer will be “to be happy.” After all, if it’s Beyoncé’s answer, that basically means it’s right. But it really is a unique question in that its answer can be predicted despite not knowing anything about the individual being questioned. For the most part, we’re all striving for happiness.

It speaks to the universal and strong grip that the concept of happiness has on the human species. It definitely wasn’t always this way — for much of our existence, the goal was simply to see the next day. In many parts of today’s world, this goal is met and surpassed to the point that having too much of life’s necessities has become a problem. On a global level, more people have died from obesity than from being underweight in recent years.

Once more and more of us started to have easy access to what we need to survive, and even to concepts that we now consider fundamental rights like healthcare and education, we needed to shift our time and effort to something — and so we turned to finding happiness.