Buying Happiness

Buying Happiness

Jenkie Hernandez

ENG 220

May 17, 2013

James Paterson

Buying Happiness

Americans are jam packed with indulgences like 3D television and organic extra-virgin olive oil; at the same time, we have a hard time being happy. Despite problems such as international conflict, earth quakes, climate change, and processed foods, we enjoy an extraordinary degree of wealth and security. This affluence allows us to focus our attention to more spiritual matters—to yearn for lives not just of material comfort, but of meaning, balance, and joy. This isn’t just true of the United States. As countries become richer, citizens become less focused on physical and economic security, and more concerned with goals like happiness and self-realization. Today, the most highlighted value running parallel to goods being sold is happiness. The new generation’s modern lifestyle wants people to always be happy, fit, and successful; more and more marketing slogans hints or directly states that the product they are marketing can indeed make people happier. Although, we all know that happiness lies within ourselves, and that material goods can bring only short term happiness. Significant differences between these two types of interest must be pointed out in order to understand what to give preference to.

Tangible items, often seen as the fastest way to happiness, because they are easier to obtain; the only hurdle that may prevent anyone from having certain items is its cost. The culture today is obsessed with instant gratification and compares material possessions with spiritual, intellectual and cultural values almost the same as obtaining those qualities which these items symbolize (Fodder). To some degree this explains the theory of modern consumers; it is easier to pay money for an item that symbolizes beauty, rather than making an effort to develop self-confidence and love for who they truly are. Material items persuade and makes people lust to find easy solutions. On the other hand, the genuine experience of happiness, such as; solid friendships, a sense of beauty, a sense of humor, inner peace—do not have a set price and are true, compared to their alternatives; because we cannot just purchase them, but only experience or learn them, which makes it quite difficult and almost impossible to obtain. This generation is more consumed by what they can buy to make them happy rather than what they can accept and do to be happy. We evolved into a generation of problem-solvers that we look for an alternative route to everything – including life itself.