As it remained in the last article, this time we will talk about how we became unhappy after having everything.

So, let’s start with the idea of ​​happiness promoted in the media.

The American Lifestyle

Since the 1970s the United States of America began to promote its idea of ​​happiness. The USA were the ones who promoted the American lifestyle, the one that supposed to make us unimaginably happy. We always saw in those commercials a family with a big house, a woman who took care of the children at breakfast, this family had a car, a house full of appliances, and somehow all that happiness was reduced to something like that.

Because America is the country that has influenced our lives since World War II, and because they were the ones who said they were so happy, because everyone migrated to America and we still have these waves of those excited people wanting to go there to live real happiness, because all the actors, doctors, intellectuals, and artists ran there to taste the happiness of Hollywood, the rest of the world tended to embrace with great pleasure the American lifestyle promoted on the big screens, so that we could be happy like them.

In this way, we came to have the whole of Europe copying the American lifestyle, a process known as the americanization, claiming that it was, in fact, our own invention.

Because many of us were amazed about the Hollywood productions, the rapid economic growth of this country, the multitude of things they had, we were drawn to try this lifestyle, and we embraced it with a huge hope to be as happy as they were.

The new idea of happiness

Today we assist to another idea of happiness, namely the one that promotes having everything, like all kinds of new gadgets and care products, even if we do not need so many it is cool to have that many.

The whole world runs for the latest phone models, for the most modern kitchen robots, etc. and all this to wake up on a Friday night, each member in a corner of the room, separated from the family and having an imaginary life on social networks.

Another new trend is to be famous. Everyone wants to be a star, to appear on at least some screen. Everyone puts their lives on social networks but we are afraid of vaccines that will put chips on us.

In the end, this is the general idea of what we are running off in search of that happiness.

The idea of happiness we have is a commercially promoted one

A first observation we should make is that these things that promise us happiness are material things. So, we should ask ourselves, if I were alone in this world, surrounded only by these material things, would I be happy?

To help you answer this question I will give you examples of people who have had these things.

Robin McLaurin Williams, one of the most famous comedy actors in the world. He has won three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and three Grammy Awards. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in 1988, for his role in Good Morning, Vietnam! (an amazing and positive movie by the way), in 1990 for his role in The Circle of Missing Poets, and in 1992 for his role as King Fisherman. 

He had a wonderful career in television, he was also famous and he had everything. However, he died by suicide.

Another example of a people who always had a smile on their face is Marlin Monroe. She was an actress, model, singer, sex symbol, and pop diva. She was appreciated and respected in upper-class circles, close to John F. Kennedy, friends with Frank Sinatra, and many other well-known singers and actors. Always surrounded by famous people, she was finally declared the most beautiful woman of all times.

So she had fame, money, goods. However, she ended her life by suicide.

So fame and wealth are not the reason for happiness.

We should easily understand that everything we see on TV is worked by hundreds of people in the back and made to be sold.

If the goods had been the reason for happiness, then we would have seen all the rich standing in their houses with all the new phones in their arms, enjoying their fame. But we do not see this.

All the rich people, whom we have as a model in life, have the most modern material things just because they can afford them and because they have so much money that they would have nothing to spend in their whole life.

An example of a rich family and what really makes them happy

To make you understand why material things we are running after do not guarantee our happiness I will address the new generations, and I will analyze the Kardashian family – one of the richest families in America. So rich that they allowed doing their own TV show about their own lives.

However, if we look closely at the things they really value, then we will see that they travel, they stay with their families, they do physical activity to maintain their bodies, talk to each other, help each other. Everything they really care about is the human relations and interaction with the loved ones. Their life is about being well, about doing what they love, about waking up in the morning happy.

We will see this in all rich people. No matter how big their houses are, and how many cars they have, spend a lot of time in their lives with their families, they spend time with their children, staying with their parents, traveling and doing other activities not looking in the phones. The phones are just the means that help them to make money. The phones are there to make a picture and freeze a part of those moments, but the real moment of happiness is about that time spend with their families, about that moment of traveling, etc.

Conclusions:

My dear friends, don’t be fooled by television and everything you see around you. Happiness is very close to us, but we need to take our eyes off the phones to realize how lucky we are to have parents alive and healthy, to embrace them and listen to their stories or simply how their day was; how lucky we are to have healthy children, to see them grow up and to relive childhood through their eyes. We are lucky to have some friends that we can call and make jokes with. We must be happy that we live in times of peace and that we can see the beauty of the world. Throughout this story, material things are only means, they are not the reasons for our happiness.