Happiness?

Great movie.

I have always thought that happiness is something impossible to obtain. Or, if not impossible, it won’t last; humans tend to want things they don’t have, and when they get them, it’s not how they thought it would be. Technology is a very good example: you want the phone that came out a month ago, you buy the phone, and then you start to notice all the downsides it has. Of course, the fact that the industry develops a new, improved version of the same phone every 2 weeks helps a lot.

Our ability to simulate the future, to think about possibilities, is what makes this pursuit of happiness possible. We always try to choose the best option, the one that will give us more pleasure, that we’ll like the most. However, just like Gilbert showed, we are often wrong.

This synthetic happiness that Daniel Gilbert talks about seems like the solution. We create it when we don’t get what we wanted, when our decisions don’t give us what we thought and we lose (or don’t win), basically to make us feel better. It’s good when you didn’t have any option, when circumstances are more than you can handle… but it’s also like nature telling you to stop whining and start to like what you have, or at least that’s what it seem to me. Sure, you can be happy anyway, that’s great, but I think that actually being happy anyway can make you a conformist that stops worrying about the world around you.

It’s an extreme case, I won’t deny it, but it’s not impossible.