An honest dialogue about love, life, and everything in-between...

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Leave My Stuff Alone

8:13 PM |

Exploring happiness...

They say that money can't buy happiness and that you should never invest your happiness in stuff. So say you enjoy visiting other places, keeping up with family, surfing, etc, how are you supposed to do all of those things with out money? Even keeping up with family requires money. You have to have money to own a phone to speak to them. You have to have money to visit them if they don't live near you and even if they do you have to have money to put gas in your car or take public transportation. Even if you write them letters you have to have money to buy the paper to write on. (Unless you are a liberator of office supplies). So you're in this cycle of needing money to do these things to keep you happy. So in a sense money does buy you happiness.

You are also told that you should never invest your happiness in other people. So even if you are not single to put the weight of your happiness onto other people is unreliable. Husbands/boyfriends leave. Kids eventually grow up. Friends flake out. And not everyone has the most reliable family. And while it's very possible to be very happy alone, there is something called loneliness. And no matter how happy you are with yourself EVERYONE gets lonely.

Then there is this notion about stuff. The things you own. How you can't take it with you when you die so you shouldn't stress the importance of it when you are living. This could be a single person's take on it because when you don't have a husband/boyfriend/kids truthfully after a certain age all you have is your stuff. I mean once you get older, friends move away, get married, have babies and all that time you were able to spend with one another is drastically reduced. So you start to seek solace in your own place. Your own space. Start doing things for yourself. And eventually if you have no pets, the things you have start to make you happy. And even when you die the things you own have the potential of making others happy. Those others being the ones that inherit your stuff. They can potentially pay off some bills, give themselves a bit of a financial cushion if you did your planing correctly. Then don't they get a bit of happiness from your stuff??

I don't know. Sometimes I think this notion of what it takes to be "happy" is just an illusion. One great big hamster wheel on which we run constantly trying to get somewhere that we probably will never truly reach. Because once you become happy with where you are you are now labeled complacent. And no one wants to be just complacent. So back on the wheel we go. Round and round and round.....



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