Happiness is different for everyone. How to achieve it is a lifelong question. For me, happiness is feeling love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy. Living a meaningful, happy life is about creating, sharing and capturing memories earned through experiences that span a lifetime. The goal of existence is happiness; and we seek to live a life filled with happiness.
Experiences become a part of our identity. We are not our possessions, but we are the accumulation of everything we’ve seen, the experiences we’ve had and the people we’ve met. Buying an Apple Watch isn’t going to change who you are; but hiking the Kokoda Track most certainly will. You can value your material goods. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nevertheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are a part of you. We are the total of our experiences.
The paradox of possessions is that we assume that the happiness we get from purchasing something new will last as long as the thing itself. But the trouble with material possessions is that the happiness they provide fades quickly. We get used to new possessions, what once seemed novel and exciting quickly becomes the norm. Also, possessions, by their nature, foster comparisons and there’s always someone with a better one. The temporary happiness achieved by buying things can be referred to as ‘pudd...
