Is Happiness Overrated?
Is Happiness Overrated?
Happiness. How many times have not all of us heard that word? How many times have we not been asked if we really are happy? Happy at kindergarten, at school, at university, at work and at the retirement home. When asked what their main goal in life is, a lot of people answer that it is to be happy. But what is happiness? Is it possible to be too happy? And is happiness really all that it is cracked up to be? Some believe that happiness is the most important thing in the world and something that we should always be working towards where as others believe that we should focus more on living and less on trying to constantly achieve happiness.
A lot of people believe that if they only had a brand new Porsche or a mansion on the beach of some Caribbean island or a couple of million kroner in the bank, then they would be happy. For most people dreams like that will never become true and yet a large amount of those people will consider themselves happy. At the same time you find that many celebrities who have all the above mentioned things are not happy, the amount of celebrities who commit suicide is quite high, in fact many of the world's most famous people's lives ended in suicide. From this we can draw these conclusions;
1) Money and success does not make you happy. Or
2) Happiness is overrated, and is therefore not enough to make everybody want to live.
The lesson to be learned from the example of the rich and famous is that material things such as money and expensive things can only keep you happy for a while, this is a material happiness'. Something that I think most people who have achieved material happiness' agree on is that that sort of happiness is very overrated and not the sort of happiness that us human beings should be trying to accomplish. Material happiness is temporary and lacks substantial meaning. We should also consider that people by nature always want more than what they have, if you are rich, there is probably
Happiness. How many times have not all of us heard that word? How many times have we not been asked if we really are happy? Happy at kindergarten, at school, at university, at work and at the retirement home. When asked what their main goal in life is, a lot of people answer that it is to be happy. But what is happiness? Is it possible to be too happy? And is happiness really all that it is cracked up to be? Some believe that happiness is the most important thing in the world and something that we should always be working towards where as others believe that we should focus more on living and less on trying to constantly achieve happiness.
A lot of people believe that if they only had a brand new Porsche or a mansion on the beach of some Caribbean island or a couple of million kroner in the bank, then they would be happy. For most people dreams like that will never become true and yet a large amount of those people will consider themselves happy. At the same time you find that many celebrities who have all the above mentioned things are not happy, the amount of celebrities who commit suicide is quite high, in fact many of the world's most famous people's lives ended in suicide. From this we can draw these conclusions;
1) Money and success does not make you happy. Or
2) Happiness is overrated, and is therefore not enough to make everybody want to live.
The lesson to be learned from the example of the rich and famous is that material things such as money and expensive things can only keep you happy for a while, this is a material happiness'. Something that I think most people who have achieved material happiness' agree on is that that sort of happiness is very overrated and not the sort of happiness that us human beings should be trying to accomplish. Material happiness is temporary and lacks substantial meaning. We should also consider that people by nature always want more than what they have, if you are rich, there is probably