You Have It All, So Why Aren’t You Happy?
A dilemma I’ve often encountered in this period is whether it is ungrateful to feel doubtful about your own life. Logically, if a person has a job, a house, and a partner, there shouldn’t be much to complain about. Also, it can feel almost offensive toward those who don’t have these things.
And yet, many people feel estranged from their work, crushed by expensive mortgages, or unhappy in their marriages.
I believe this comes from a social construction of what is considered right and wrong, successful and unsuccessful. People who are able to work in an office, buy a house, and find a partner have, on paper, checked all the boxes that society has decided define a “good life.”
These ideas are given to us when we are young, so we internalize them. And then, when we ask ourselves questions like “Why should we get married?”, we often end up speechless. Still, the pressure remains. Because who doesn’t get married? Only “spinsters,” people nobody wants.
It becomes common sense to follow these rules, and this comes from a mix of traditionalism and masculinity. Men who don’t get married are often seen as “cool” or independent, while women are judged much more harshly. Culture, as Geertz (2008) says, is a system of shared meanings and symbols through which people make sense of the world.
Because of this, people who achieve society’s goals are expected to be happy. And if they are not, it simply “doesn’t make sense.” They are seen as ungrateful, dramatic, or just looking for attention. Have you ever seen someone leave their job just because they were unhappy, and actually be supported by the people around them? Usually, they are seen as “crazy” or “reckless.”
A solution to this is hard to find, because it is rooted in all of us, whether we admit it or not. So I wonder: have we become a society where happiness is just an illusion or maybe something we are simply expected to perform?
SOURCE:
Geertz, C. (1973). “Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture”. In The cultural geography reader (pp.41-51). Routledge
