Be Happy With What You Have

As I pondered on this subject, some words of Augustine of Hippo came to mind that are closely related to it: the poor man is not he who has less, but rather he who needs more and more to be happy. If we put aside the meaning of the word rich, in the sense of someone who has a lot of money, we can see that this title has much more to do with the happiness that this philosopher talked about centuries ago. Being happy with what you have is the key to true peace.

Happiness comes from places that have little or nothing to do with the money we have, because what makes us rich is not material at all, but rather emotional and physiological.

A world full of impermanent things

In relation to what we indicated above, it is worth noting that we live in a world where we are surrounded by things that can all be considered superfluous: advertising and new technologies want to convince us that in life it is all is about possessing material goods that supposedly can and will make us happy.

This is not true at all: we are no happier today than our parents were, even though we have the latest telephone, two cars in front of the door and three computers in our house. It may indeed be that our lives have become a little more pleasant, but the consumerism that offers us these things will never be able to give us true fulfillment as humans.

When my sister tells me she urgently needs new clothes, when she has two closets full of clothes to choose from, I wonder how much we are fooled by our needs: we usually value things that we don’t have and completely forget what we really lack.

Do I really need it to be happy?

These examples show how accurate the quote at the beginning of this article is, so much so, that it’s amazing to think that someone said it as early as the Middle Ages. However, this is because we have already repeated the idea this quote conveys hundreds of times: Do I really need this? This is a question we should ask ourselves in a lot of situations.

As we said, we have so many things in our possession that we sometimes forget the things we can’t live without: good mental and physical health, the ability to build personal relationships that make our lives worth living. , having friends who will always be there for us, and being blessed with a loving family.

None of this can be bought, even if you owned all the gold in the world. Therefore, ironically, all this can make us rich with happiness: no one will feel better than someone who has overcome cancer, someone who has overcome depression, someone who finds in his partner the best support he can imagine. can imagine or someone who receives a loving hug.

Be happy with what you have

I’m sure there have been plenty of times when we’ve been frustrated because we weren’t able to achieve our goals or because we couldn’t get what we really wanted. In fact, we feel like we need more and more as we become less and less satisfied with what we have.

Of course it is good to set goals for yourself that you want to achieve, because simply adapting yourself to what you have or are equals stagnation. However, it is important to remember that happiness can be felt by enjoying the process we are going through.

Our desires cannot bring us happiness, they only exaggerate this happiness: it is very enriching to learn how to feel complete with the things you have achieved or that you have been able to give to others, and to be able to to receive the things that come your way with open arms without asking for anything.

In short, as we have already seen, it is the things that come to us for nothing and that have no material value, that can make us really rich. Money will bring us comfort, but what moves our emotions is what gives us meaning.