Despite What Modern Society Tell You...

...you can not buy happiness.

There is no "happiness" app for the iPad or iPod touch or the iPhone.

Happiness isn't an option available in that new car.

There is no happiness pill (and if there was, we would all be taking it).

If your friends make you happy, then that's great; what do you do when they leave though?

There is no government-funded happiness entitlement.


I will never, ever understand why some people always insist on looking for happiness on the outside, because it can never be found there, ever. They treat it as if it were this grab-bag gift, with the only real trick being that you simply have to buy the right bag. I think part of this is a failure of education, as we spend so much time these days teaching children to memorize things for tests that we don't spend any time talking about the deeper, more important things in life. When I think about it more though, education is just a side issue; the larger issue is that so many of us actually really do believe that happiness is this external thing. As a society we have become drunk on our own success, and like a drunk, our common sense has become dulled to the point of virtual non-existence.

You can sum everything I'm trying to say into a single quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself"

He's right.