Happy People Live On Less

Comment: Many studies have been conducted about happiness. Scientists claim that happy carefree people live on less than gloomy people. At the same time, many studies conducted by the Yale, Denver University, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem indicate that books about how to be happy actually bring the opposite. The readers of such books acquire a lot of information and begin to chase happiness, but this chase doesn’t lead to success and they begin to feel even worse.

Answer: The pursuit of happiness eventually leads to misery if one cannot attain happiness. If a person feels even slightly dissatisfied, he is already miserable.

If happiness came down to a weekend fishing trip or getting a ticket to a football match, it would be possible to attain happiness, it would be within reach. But if you’re running after some transcendental happiness, it can be found, and is possible, but how you attain it is unclear.

From the perspective of the ego, our whole life is a totally empty chase because happiness keeps evading us. We run after it, but it keeps getting further and further way. We still chase it and it draws even further way. This is how our life ends without attaining happiness.

Therefore, there are many things that satisfy people today: there are drugs, sports or other temptations like programs on the Internet or TV, and there is no need to chase happiness. A person can watch a football game or a program and feel happy.

Moreover, the public opinion is the same belief that happiness is right within our reach. One day you have a drink after work, the next day you can meet with friends and another day you can go out and have fun with your kids.

This means that our life is arranged so that a person would be satisfied and feel good without problems. It is like injecting different types of drugs to people, a emotional, spiritual, or informational drug. This gives the person the opportunity to calm himself without thinking about more lofty matters.

Comment: Still, there is a hole in this theory since depression is on the rise.

Answer: The hole is not because the media are trying to suppress any desire to something that is sublime, but because our ego keeps popping its head crying out: “What is the point?!” Here the media are invited to hit it on the head with a hammer so that it will lower it again.

As Baal HaSulam said, the most important thing for us is: “to float unknowingly in the streams of life as we have always done,” meaning that a person wants to take his mind off this question and continue his life without thinking.

But the fact is that the means we have to suppress our egoism or its fictitious filling is limited, and in anything else we do, we still he what it is mumbling about the meaning of life. In any case, we will still have to answer this question correctly without clogging it with all sorts of false goals and content.

As a result, humanity will awaken from the false feeling of euphoria brought about by drugs and anti-depressants with a great groan around the world, which will be sure to lead it to find the true meaning of our existence.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/17/16