What makes for a happy life?
A lot of people spend their entire existence searching for the answer to this question. They spend hundreds of dollars on all-inclusive getaways to enjoy their time poolside drinking Piña Coladas and other mixtures of ‘rum happiness’. In extreme cases, and not so uncommon these days, we become indebted with homes we cannot afford, expensive cars that imply greater happiness, and extravagances. What people really need is a life preserver, not another purchase.
This is a snapshot of America’s debt in 2014:
$11.74 trillion in debt (an increase of 3.3% from 2013)
$882.6 billion in credit card debt
$8.14 trillion in mortgages
$1.13 trillion in student loans
At the other extreme, 14.3% of households (17.5 million, approximately 1 in 7) were food-insecure.
As middle-class America faces an unidentified and insecure future, its counterpart goes hungry and the elite spend more. However, despite all this access to information about the level of debt and poverty in America, we continue to search for the happy life through spending.
How can we resist, with messages of ‘living the good life’ plastered on every shopping centre window and on every television in America. Advertisements repeatedly tell families that their value is measured by how much they have and how much decadence they can afford to give their families. The cycle continues as the family unit begins to deteriorate further from the excessive pressures of ‘being happy.’
And of course we catch ourselves wandering down memory lane, remembering simpler times when a nickel and a good supper made a kid happy – when families actually spoke to one another and didn’t rush out the door.
Today, we can use our ‘pretend money’ and buy whatever we want on plastic. We can finance our boobs to maintain youth, and as the use of plastic surgery by women increases, so does our hope of putting time on hold for ‘happiness.’
As I listen to the song ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams, I wonder if our current happily-medicated society can ever be ‘brought down’. With all this abundance, we now have more people taking prescription ‘happiness’ than pharmaceutical companies can account for. Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ surely lives.
So as I ponder all of this with my morning latte in hand, looking through flyers for deals on toilet paper, I can’t help but think that somewhere along the line we became a society selling happiness and buying happiness, but not truly living it.
Photo Credit
Photo by Melinda Cochrane – all rights reserved
Thank you for reading
Amen!