Decoding Happiness - 1 (The Memes that made me think)

There was a time when a series of "Happiness is" memes used to crowd my social media interaction spaces, these ranged from comparing happiness to having one's favorite fries seating next to the window to suddenly meeting the college bestie unexpectedly to even getting a chance to use your loo after a long trip. The unseen common factor in these however made me think, why happiness has to always depend on time-discrete things or events.

Having your favorite food certainly can make you happy, more happiness can be felt when you meet your long-lost friend after a long time but, how long any of these would last? What happens after the happy event? We all know the answer, we would again start waiting, preparing, and planning for the next happy event to occur. The day this topic crossed my mind, a  depressing realization arose, we from the very early stage of our lives have practically spent most of our time between one such event to another, sometimes anticipating, sometimes preparing, and planning. 

Just think of your current state of happiness, there may be something which you are planning to get for yourself (maybe a car or a new mobile or a dress), and you believe that will make you happy. There may be some position you aspire to hold and certain financial conditions you target to reach, and you strongly believe you will be happier when you are able to do so. There may be some people whom you want love or recognition from again in the belief that that will fulfill you in some sense. 

In our human belief system somehow it got ingrained that happiness is always a state that is elsewhere and elsewhen to achieve. For example, when in school we have been told and re-told to study hard for the sake of getting good grades after grades are obtained preparation for a series of entrance exams starts after they are cracked preparation for campusing starts and it continues till eternity in some or other form. However, when life gives you chance to look back, you would find how insignificant was the happiness associated with the achievements of each of these milestones compared to the efforts put in. 

This is best described as "Hedonic Treadmill" in 1971 by Brickman and Campbell. Human tendency is to return to a stable state quickly from being happy (or unhappy) in a very short span, this makes the human search for happiness similar to walking on a treadmill, you walk and walk but displacement is zero. 

Is there a way to switch the treadmill off or get down from it? we will try to find out in the next part. 

[READ PART 2 HERE]

~Avirup Chakraborty