Toyosi Onikosi: Why Do We Outsource Happiness These Days?

Yara always thought happiness was something simple, something you barely noticed as it slipped into ordinary days like days when her mother hummed while cutting vegetable leaves or cooking a huge pot of fish stew; her grandmother weaving her hair into cornrows and fussing over how the hairstyle wouldn’t turn out nice if she didn’t keep her head still; her father tired but gentle at the table, telling familiar jokes just to make everyone laugh. Happiness belonged to everyone in the room — it lived in shared chores, small acts, quiet sacrifices. Nobody wondered if happiness was enough, because it was simply how things were.

But as the years passed, everything seemed to change. Suddenly, people were talking about self-care as if it were proof you mattered. Her friends showed off all the countries they’d visited, photographed their dinners like they were in magazines, and made highlight reels that looked like commercials for a good life. Even gatherings felt transactional — a quick group photo for likes, someone scrolling at the table, someone else leaving early. The easy laughter faded, replaced by talk of boundaries, enforcing dominance and protecting your energy.

Happiness no longer felt shared; it felt staged, measured by strangers’ reactions online. The need to show off seemed endless. There was always something new—the latest phone, a designer bag, an extravagant trip, or an achievement added to a résumé. Yara watched as her friends scheduled holidays, meticulously planning locations, restaurants, and captions for their social media posts. They counted cities visited instead of memories made, arranging sunsets to fit their feeds. All this proof collecting became exhausting. Sometimes, she wondered whether people were travelling farther, only to end up feeling lonelier.

Yara herself was not immune to it all. She loved her many designer scents and her new high-tech gadgets, and the subtle desire to flaunt them. But some nights she found herself staring at her reflection, not entirely convinced she’d found happiness. She wondered if the validation from promotions at work, the thrill of ticking off milestones, or the rush of likes online had ever really replaced the warmth she used to feel in her mother’s kitchen or in the sitting room with her family, where they watched the news together or whatever new movie was on.

Was she chasing satisfaction, or just chasing approval?

She missed a time when happiness was communal, quiet, and given—not bargained for, not chased. Life felt bigger back when no one needed to collect evidence for others to admire. And after years of pursuing happiness, Yara realised her generation might have left behind the one thing that made happiness real.

Late at night, scrolling through endless reels of glossy lives, Yara would think about her grandmother and her parents—how sharing a meal, just being together, made everything feel enough. Happiness had never needed a witness. She wondered if maybe, after all, the old ways really did hold a secret: that joy survives when it’s simple, shared and quiet.

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