How Can Someone Sell Happiness?

One day, I was walking down the street and it just struck me that the people in all commercials and advertisements are always uncomfortably happy; you always see them with a big bright smile in their faces, hanging out with their friends or family. I have always had this feeling of uneasiness every time I’d see such a commercial or advertisement; I remember thinking, “How come these people seem so happy and yet, so fake?” Now I understand that you cannot ‘create’ genuine, believable happiness out of nothing! It’s just not possible. Commercial happiness always seems to be lacking something, it’s incomplete; there’s an element that marketing directors and staff haven’t found how to sell yet: genuine and true happiness.

I understand that smiling people next to a product, create this idea that that particular product will make you happy. It is a psychological technique that marketing teams use in order to sell what they need. The problem is that we end up buying things that we don’t even need because we’re caught in the ‘illusion’ of happiness-inducing objects or services. A while after the purchase, we notice (or maybe we don’t) no difference in our happiness ‘levels’. That’s because what we bought never intended to make us happy, its purpose was to get us to consume something we didn’t plan on buying in the first place.

My issue with what I’m discussing is that I believe that as humans, we don’t need ANY material goods to maintain a healthy and positive mental state; we only need good relations that fulfil and us and help us grow in who we are or aspire to be. People help people; not objects or services. As Henry Nouwen has pointed out in his book Reaching Out, we have reached a point of great loneliness in our society, and we either turn into material goods to help us feel less alone, or we tend to create co-dependent relationships that turn toxic without us even realising it. “Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other. They ask for gentle fearless space in which we can move to and from each other.” (Nouwen, Reaching Out)

Developing and growing are processes that never really cease, and we cannot freely explore the vast realm of who we are (can become) if we depend on someone else to walk us throughout the journey. We need to reach a point where we know a part of ourselves well enough in order to be able to create an independent, healthy relation of any kind. The harsh truth is that there is always a possibility that a relationship we have with someone will not exist at some point in the future. When that happens, we need to be able to depend on ourselves to move on; we cannot make a person the anchor of our mental well-being or strength. When the waters get rough and a storm is seen in the horizon, we need to know that we have a strong anchor that will be able to stabilise the ship; for some people that anchor is themselves, for others it is a divine presence (God, the Universe, etc.).

In our uniqueness we need to maintain strength of character and a positive look on life; having one of these depend on another person, not only gives them an immense responsibility, it also makes you extremely dependent on an external and relatively unreliable ‘variable’. Personal mental strength to create independent relationships does not come easy. It requires countless hours of meditation and ‘soul-searching’, facing and accepting harsh and difficult truths about ourselves and our natures, it breaks you and then in builds you again; it’s just that this time you’re going to be stronger. It is a beautiful journey that everyone who has taken it, has not regretted it; it not only leaves you with a story to tell, it helps you understand the world around you in a better way. So, I encourage and explore all of us to think where or who we decide to rest our happiness on… It’s not an easy task to accomplish but once we understand what’s our true source of happiness (our strong character, God, a peaceful life, etc.) then, everything else in our lives will no longer depend on commercially sold illusion of happiness ;)

‘Till next time…