On Happiness

January 22, 2007

Often I think to myself that when I buy something—an iPod case, a new winter coat, some highlighters—that it will make me happy. But it usually doesn’t. And I finally figured out why. I’m not increasing my happiness, I’m merely lessening my unhappiness: I no longer have to be annoyed by scratches on my iPod; I don’t notice the cold so much; and I don’t have to complain about how quickly these newfangled Bics run out of neon yellow ink. But while life is, at times, easier, it’s not really any better for all that. While these material acquisitions do improve my quality of life, they don’t actually raise my level of happiness.

So what am I getting at, here? Is it possible that buying more crap actually doesn’t make me happier? No, that’s not true. Lots of crap does make me happier. Books make me happier. Music makes me happier. Electronic equipment that I’ll have to replace in two years makes me, inexplicably, happier. Good food (either in the Vichyssoise category or the Bagel Dogs category) makes me much happier.

So what’s wrong with the other stuff I’ve been buying all my life that it doesn’t make me happier? Would it be better if I had some more tax cuts? I don’t know. I think the problem is that when you buy something to fix a problem it just emphasizes the fact that life is filled with small annoyances, and these little stopgaps don’t do much to address the fundamental problem: you spend most of your time dealing with problems that you don’t want to have. So the occasional item that does more than try to fix a problem another possession created—be it a baguette, a Justin Timberlake album, or a pair of jeans that have been artfully “pre-weathered” such that they appear to have actually been worn by a steamboat coal-shoveler for twenty years—demonstrates how big and interesting the world can be.

Of course, friendship and family and the sheer exhilaration of new experiences make me happy too. But c’mon. Actual stuff is pretty great, too, sometimes. You know you love surround sound and ice cream.

In a related story, it’s Sausage Week over at Dethroner and I couldn’t be more excited.

Posted in Life