It can be frustrating how the human brain is not wired to be happy for long periods of time. We spend significant portions of our lives chasing our next big dreams and hopes, we are always fighting for our next purpose, our next win. It’s as if our lives are just a series of never-ending chases from one thing to another.
We chase happiness, we chase fulfilment, and we chase contentment. It never ends, and humans are wired to always be on the lookout for more. Because the minute you stop wanting more is the minute you accept that you can’t go any further. It’s a decision that only you can take as an individual. And that’s what it is.
You could have been dreaming about buying a particular car for a long time. Hell, you’ve had that dream since the car was manufactured and released to the market. It was expensive, but your dreams were saturated with images of you being behind the wheel of that sweet ride. So, what do you do? You work your butt off, you fight tooth and nail, and do everything you can to buy the car.
And when you buy it, you’re ecstatic. You’ve finally achieved it! That will be peak happiness flowing through you at the moment. But how long will that last? How long will that happiness last? A few weeks? A few months? Eventually, the car will stop being the shiny new toy you always dreamed of having, and the immense joy it gave you within its first few days will peter out. And you’ll return to the base level of happiness you had before you got the car.
What does this mean? Are you no longer happy with the car? No, that’s not the meaning at all. You’re still happy with it, but that joy is no more. The dopamine that you got every time you saw your new car has run out, and it’ll return the next time you achieve a major goal.
And that’s life for you. We see this play out in just about every sphere of our lives. We work hard for that promotion, we save up to buy that phone, we struggle so hard to get these things. And when we do get them, we’re happy. We’re fulfilled and we’re satisfied. We feel like we’ve gotten to the top of the mountain. Nothing will separate us from our acquisition. Nothing will stop us from feeling this way.
But then… after a short time passes… we return to the original feeling. That great promotion is still just a job to you. That expensive phone is still just another device. Just another random thing from life. And that’s it. And manufacturers know this about humanity, which is why every year they bring out new models of the same product that basically do the exact same thing. You change the casing, slap a Plus or Pro or even an alphabet behind the name, and voila, you have a new product.
And people buy them just to satisfy that need within them. Still, despite its flaws, it’s the very thing that has kept humanity for this long, because it’s the only thing that has led to our exponential growth compared to other species on Earth. Your short-term happiness is only meant to motivate you for the next task ahead. Because when you get too satisfied, you’ll not see any reason to fight for more. Only hungry men go out to look for food. If you’re happy with the way things are, you’d have no issues with striving for more.
That’s why even the person who just got promoted yesterday is already planning the roadmap to their next promotion. Or the person who bought a car last week is already making plans for the next one. It might be in the next two or even ten years, but he knows that he won’t use his dream car forever. We’re always on the move. We’re always learning and always growing.
It never really ends, we’ll always keep wanting… until the very end.
