Creative Voices

By Elena Raffone | Edited by Mariel Gousios

The concept of happiness is one of the most discussed since ancient times. Nowadays, grasping happiness with your own hands seems like a difficult and almost impossible task. We live in a materialistic world, where those who manage to have more than the average are considered better and superior. We grow up convinced that things make us happy and, consequently, we become obsessed with money, because without it, we couldn’t buy all those status symbols that we see in shop windows. However, happiness should not derive from material objects, which sooner or later will lose value. Therefore, applying material logic to feelings is one of the errors that causes the greatest frustration in our society, now consumed by the sole desire to appear in a certain way and without the desire to live in an authentic and real way. The error is therefore fundamental: well-being is not given by material objects. The point is not to not buy that thing we want so much, the point is to not place our happiness in it, since it is a short-term happiness, destined to end.

Being able to limit materialism in our lives is already a step towards happiness, a lightening, an approach to a minimalist lifestyle, which will give us awareness of the little things. We live in a materialistic world, but then what we really seek is precisely what we cannot buy: a hug from our parents, a true friend, a word of support that makes us feel truly appreciated. The wall that separates us from happiness is the inability to ever appreciate what we have. The secret is to enjoy the little things that life offers us, without thinking about what we could ever have. Happiness is therefore not a pursuit of future dreams, but on the contrary, it is trying to appreciate what we have in the present, here and now.

We always live expecting from the future what we lack, living in a condition of perpetual waiting, of suspension, entrusting to the future, that happiness that we should seek in the present. What makes us feel really satisfied  are the little things, the ones that make us understand how much it is worth living a full and meaningful life. It is essential to recognize what really matters to us: the freedom to think with our own head, to be ourselves, to live our life the way we have chosen to do. This is happiness and all of this cannot be bought with money. Having a lot of money, being able to afford many luxuries corresponds to a feeling of well-being that is very distant from the concept of happiness, which is something so subtle and beautiful that we cannot allow ourselves to compare it to a credit card. Happiness is made up of moments, of episodes in which we experience intense emotions and that give us the measure of the beauty of living.

Kurt Vonnegut once said: “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what it is.” So, it is not about always trying to obtain what we don’t have, but about learning to recognize the moments in which we feel truly happy, appreciate them and cherish them with care. Often the real things are precisely those that we cannot touch with our hands. 

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