I was listening to a Buddhist monk talking about suffering, and he was saying, according to some scientific studies, people have a baseline regarding happiness. Almost anything can happen, you get promoted, you get money, you win the lottery, you get married, you get power, etc., you name it, these things will alter your happiness, your happiness will increase, but after a few months, two years with luck maybe, your happiness will go back down to that baseline, it won't stay up, it may even go lower. But the baseline of happiness does not change. Then, he was talking about how these scientists did a study on people who practiced breathing awareness meditation and realized that, by meditating, people would not see a substantial increase in their happiness in the short term, but nevertheless, it changed the baseline, causing the person to achieve more lasting happiness over time.
But well, I am not here advertising meditation, what I wanted to talk about is the baseline, how there are things that can give you temporary happiness (or unhappiness), but after that you will go back to the same state you were in before. You can pursue external things in search of happiness, but then, after a temporary pleasure, happiness will slip away again. Which in a sense is something we all know, inside we know that, even if we get everything we want, we are not going to be eternally happy, things will not give us lasting happiness. The point is that we go back to where we were before, even after we get those things we wanted so much.
Moreover, as far as I know, sometimes we believe so much that things are going to bring us happiness, that when we have those things, and we are not so happy, we actually get depressed, because we have everything we thought would make us happy, and we are not. We put too much pressure on things to fill our lacks.
And no matter what you have, no matter if you get everything, one always wants something else. We want the new toy, we cry for it, we want it badly, but after we have it we just play with it for a second and throw it away.
We believe that by getting these things we will be happy, however, the other people who already have these things we want maybe are not happy.
It's not a matter of what you have, it's a matter of what you want, because if no matter what you have you still want more, it's like, ludicrous. I mean, you're reading this, you probably have a house, a place to rest, food, a partner, or failing that, family and/or friends, and who knows. Many things to be thankful for I hope. There are people who are looking for that, that thing that you already have, and they think that if only they had it, they would be happy. So it's not about having. As long as you are not happy with what you already have (right now), and you keep wanting what you don't have, you will be in this same cycle. In a loop of wanting what you don't have, having it and being happy for a moment, going back to baseline and then wanting something different.
I don't have the keys to happiness, I don't know exactly what one must do to be happy, maybe meditate and have a spiritual discipline, but what I do think is that if we are not grateful with what we have and learn to be content with what is, right now, with ourselves, we will remain dissatisfied. I find the baseline concept interesting because it shows that we will be just as happy after we have what we want as we probably are now. It shows that it is only an illusion. Those things that we want so much, they allure us to make us believe that we need them, but they are really accessory.
I'm not saying that we should just forget about those things, because of course the desire is probably very strong, but I do think it's important that you learn to be happy with yourself and what you have without looking for the other things. The other is fine, but it is not defining, it is complementary. Also, there's a popular saying lately about how the less you chase the more you attract, I don't know if it's true, I hope it is but I'm not sure, but anyway, I think the more we need to be happy, the more miserable we are.
It is like the saying that goes it is not richer he who has the most but he who needs the least.