You Just Can't Buy Happiness

“As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”

Yes, I said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, “Oh, if I were young again.” You never hear people say, “I wish I were sixty-five.”

He smiled. “You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.”

“…Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you about it. ‘Guess what I got? Guess what I got?’

You know how I always interpreted that? These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for sense of comradeship.”

(Excerpts from Tuesdays With Morrie)

I realized that the reason that I don’t ever feel contented whenever I get something I want like for example a new laptop is probably because I’m unconsciously using these material things as substitute for the more essential and intangible things like love and affection. There are times when I really want something so bad and when I finally get it I don’t even feel very happy about it. It’s just like, “Okay, I got it now. So what?” It doesn’t fill me up. Maybe because deep inside it’s not what I need to feel happy and contented. I’m trying to satisfy myself with material things because it’s all I can get. I’m trying to convince myself that having these stuff will make me happy. I grew up believing that. They made me like this. I’m constantly looking for what was denied from me growing up – love and affection. I wasn’t raised in a loving environment. I have parents that believe that giving their children shelter, food, clothing, education and some other material things already makes them good parents. I’m not saying that providing these things is bad but parenting is way more than that. It’s being more than just a provider. You might question what I know about parenting when I’m not even a parent – at least not yet. I know what good parents should be like because I know what I want and what I need as a daughter.

Is today The Day?

“Everyone knows they’re going to die but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”

“..To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time.”

“Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

“We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.

And facing death changes all that?

Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently”

“If you accept that you can die at any time, then you might not be as ambitious as you are.”

“We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships that we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.”

(Excerpts from Tuesdays With Morrie)

We are so busy caught up with the everyday mundane stuffs that we forget and take for granted what’s really important. I remember a pastor saying that we should live like we’re going to die [soon]. But what do we do? We live as if we’re immortals. We live as if we know when exactly we are going to die. If you knew that you were going to die tomorrow, how could you have spent the day? You’d probably do things differently. You’d probably do the things that you don’t usually do or the things that you usually put aside and the right time for everything becomes now. You would probably appreciate everything more and draw joy from the smallest things. We could have better relationships and more satisfying lives if we always remember that we could die in a snap at any time, any place. Not everyone gets the chance to foresee when they are going to die like those sick people with numbered days.