Ahmad Adedimeji Amobi: Why Does Happiness Flee So Swiftly?

One day, I was on Twitter and this tweet from Ama Udofa appeared on my timeline: We’re never going to be truly satisfied. Each time you improve, the bar of what you consider to be achievements will continue to increase. After the initial burst of excitement, it becomes your normal and you start aiming higher.

I read the tweet more than three times and each time, I reflected on my personal escapades. 

I woke up this morning feeling like I have never done something tangible for myself. I hate feeling this way because it reveals how ungrateful I can be. I am not where I was some years ago, but every time something I long for fails to happen to me, I feel dejected and rejected. What I have now are things I’d wished for years ago. They are now sitting in my arsenal but here I am, feeling like Caribou the wanderer – as if I have nothing at all. So on days I feel this way, I remember Ama’s tweet. 

I believe the feeling of underachievement will stay with us for a long long time. Each day we wake up, we strive to become more than what we were yesterday. We are always after the next thing – the next project, the next bag, the next big dream. And when we do not get this, it feels like the world is closing in on us. As long as we want more, we’ll always feel this way. 

Mike Fishbein, in his article, The Happiness Trap: Why You’re Never Satisfied and How to Break the Cycle, wrote: “as a person achieves more success, expectations and desires rise in tandem. The result is never feeling satisfied – achieving no permanent gain in happiness.”

When we achieve a goal, there’s usually a burst of excitement, and then after a day or two, the excitement slowly wanes into zilch. Why does something that makes us feel large become something so fickle that when we look at it again, it becomes so ordinary? Something that took us so much time and energy to get.

Is it because we attach our source of happiness to success and achievements? That if something is not blatantly and measurably successful, it is nothing? If one doesn’t attach happiness to success, what more can bring happiness? I believe living itself is a source of happiness, still, there is something else – purpose, essence – that makes us bloom, right?  

There’ll always be more, what we can do is let ourselves be immersed in moments or things that bring us happiness. Did you buy a car? Let it be enough. Did you buy a new phone? Let it be enough. Did you pass an examination? Let it be enough. At least, until it is no longer enough. Don’t be quick to chase the next big thing. 

The world is fast-paced and we are always engaged with getting more that we forget to wait and ruminate on the good stuff that has happened to us. We should always take a moment – especially when it feels like we haven’t achieved – to reflect on the borders we’ve crossed in the past and the good things happening to us at present. 

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