Where Did All The Happy People Go?

Are you happy?

On a scale from one to ten, one being ‘I want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week’ and ten being ‘I want to rise with the sun and explore this beautiful wonderful world around me’, where do you rank?

I think about this question sometimes and I find it depends on what part of my life I’m thinking about.  In some parts, I’m a solid 8, even creeping toward a 9, and in other parts, dependent on the day or time of the month (I love you, Mother Nature), I’m a sure-fire zero — don’t worry dad, it doesn’t last.

So what is ‘happy’ and should we even be searching for happy all of the time?

If we didn’t have difficult times, would we appreciate the happy moments? I would like to think that we would – looking on the bright-side.

When I think about my friends and acquaintances, I wonder how many of them are happy.  They seem happy.  They laugh and joke and I enjoy their company.  Do they think the same of me?

Are we happy on the outside and sad on the in?  How can that be? If that’s true then we all deserve Academy Awards.

A quick search on Amazon.com under ‘depression’ finds 45,675 results but then realizing that includes ’The Great Depression’ (not referring to Jen and Brad’s break-up) a search of ‘mental health’ reveals 145,051 results.

I am often struck by people who visit third-world countries and come back and say ‘they have so little but they are so happy’.

Is that our problem? Do we have too much?

Our houses are larger than ever before, our televisions are larger, our desires are larger but it still doesn’t seem like enough.  People keep wanting more and bigger and better in the hope that they will be happy.

But is it working?

Maybe it is true that less is more.

Smaller houses would mean that you would actually have to see the other people living in the same home.

Smaller televisions, or at least less of them in one home, would mean that families would have to converse more and watch quality (hopefully) family programming.

Perhaps then our desire for more would be diminished because with all of this new-found family time, we would be filled with actual, true, emotional connections to the ones we love…

…and in that case, more is always better.

What do you think? Share your thoughts below.