Are we getting less happy?

SGGP 11/26/2023 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 it made us kids happy and joyful, running around the yard, our eyes sparkling with happiness.

When I was a kid, I was so excited every time Tet came, I counted down the days until the calendar was worn out. I also wanted time to pass quickly when I went to school so I could have a vacation. Every Tet, my mother took me to the market to buy me new clothes and shoes, cherishing and taking care of them every bit. When Tet came, I would dress up and show off to the whole village.

Every summer noon, picking up a pair of worn-out sandals to exchange for an ice cream or some taffy, gathering to eat them made the whole group happy and cheer loudly. I remember every afternoon, in the vast rice fields, the children gathered to catch grasshoppers, crickets, fish, crabs, then played tops, hopscotch, jump rope, 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 old, life is more comfortable now, we can buy expensive delicacies, beautiful clothes or shoes. But we can't find the feeling of excitement and happiness like when we were young anymore. 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, 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 is struggling 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, are increasingly inclined 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.

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