Why do we want more?

We as human beings are always told that at every stage of life that we will be happy in the future. Let’s back up for a bit and take an example: Imagine you are a 2-year-old kid. At that age, your entire world is your parents. They decide what to feed you, they decide what to get you. All they ever want is for you to be happy and healthy.

Okay fast forward a few years: now you’re 10 years old. Now you are more concerned about what other people think of you. Right now you don’t really care what your parents or teachers think of you, you only care about fitting in among your group of friends. Some of you will fit in, and some of you won’t. For those who fit in, they will feel some accomplishment but pretty soon that feeling fizzles out. Those who don’t fit in, feel left out and yearn for that attention.

This happens at every stage of life: Be it childhood, be it teenage, or even adulthood. At every stage of life, we feel like we need something more or like something is missing.

Why is it that we feel that way? Well, the reason why we feel that way is because we place value in things that are external to us. Take Nikola Tesla for example: Was he a genius? Yes. Was he successful? Most definitely, The power we generate today is all due to his designs. Was he ever happy? No, he died penniless without anyone by his side. The reason being he never cherished or valued what he already had. That lead him to carry out crazy experiments after crazy experiments. He was never satisfied with what he accomplished because he didn’t value himself.

That was a convoluted example but the thing is ever since birth all humans want to be happy and it is basic human nature to assign value to tangible things. That is not a bad thing necessarily but it won’t make you happy. It would just leave you with a hollow feeling.

The first step to happiness is accepting yourself for who you are. And to accept oneself is to know exactly who you actually are, what you are doing to this world that we are living in etc. Here is the catch though, this answer is subjective and hence gives meaning to the phrase:

“There is no right answer!”

There is no right answer because the answer is different for every one of us.

“When did you get this realisation?” You may be wondering. Well when you lock up a guy in a room due to a pandemic, he’d start thinking after a point. And personally, I love to game. But after a point you’d start to wonder “how many games do I have to go through before I’m happy?” and it was this simple thought that leads me to my conclusion today.

“Why do we want more? We want to be happy.”

“How can we be happy? First, we have to accept ourselves for who we are and accept what we are doing to the people around us”