Notes from a long drive one day
Billboards show all sorts of happy people. They are buying new cars, buying discount insurance, playing golf, going to full body spas, getting their hair done, or flying off for weekends in Las Vegas. Reading billboards is an education. Most of them imply something like this: 'These happy folks are having the time of their life.' If that is true, I wonder how they spend the rest of their time. Is it all downhill after you leave the spa? Are they truly happy, or are they just indulging in a little stress relief?
A couple of hundred billboards later, I arrived at (my destination). I think I am smarter than the billboards, I know that true happiness depends upon having a right-for-you goal; it doesn't come from new cars and weekends at the beach. Unhappiness is cheap. You see it everywhere, except on the billboards. Billboard wisdom takes it for granted that you are unhappy and need more of something.
I was starting to get it. There is a pleasure industry that globally takes in over $2 trillion a year. It doesn't make that kind of money because we are happy; it makes it because we want to be happy. Let-us-make-you-happy is a pain reliever that we're all hooked on. We are entertainment junkies. Self-gratification works for a little while and then we need more. That is addiction. And addicted people, in my experience, are not happy for long.
I kept circling back to the idea that happiness has something to do with having the right purpose...
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