Materialism is the disease.
Capitalists feed on it.
FOMO, anxiety breed on it.
You suffer from it.
To understand the reason why I am targeting materialism like this, you need to understand the difference between two concepts first:
Pleasure
Happiness
If you thought both these words can be used synonymously to imply the same "feeling", that is pretty inaccurate. You will read how in the next few lines.
Pleasure is a short-lived sensation that makes us feel good. The most important trait of it is that it "comes" in our state of mind. And whatever comes, is destined to go. But when this pleasure sensation goes, it makes you empty. More empty than you were before having experienced the pleasure.
Example: Social Media Validation
A lot of people post on Social Media apps simply to get validation. That is to say, see people "like" their posts → which they wrongly correlate to liking them; & head their flattering comments → which they wrongly correlate to praise. This entire idea of seeking validation is flawed at its core. But this blog post is not to rant about that. For another day
The point important here is after you post, while you get those hearts, comments, validations → it is a pleasurable experience. You feel good. But what happens after that?
You feel empty. Very empty.
Same is the case with consuming a drug like smoking cigarettes for example. Notice the same pattern playing out here.
You feel frustrated, because of work or any other reason → You seek an internal state change → Out of habit you grab the packet of cigarette → You smoke, it makes you feel good (gives pleasure) while it lasts, and then fades away → leaving you even more frustrated in the end.
Lastly, we gain pleasure from Objects.
Now, here I am using the term "Object" in a very broad perspective.
Everything that we experience as a subject is an object.
The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the devices you use, the house you live in are all objects.
Understanding until here is easy, right?
A great deal of mental clarity comes when you start to understand that your body is an object. The thoughts in your mind are objects. Your intellect is an object. Because you, as a subject, experience all of them. You are not your mind, body, intellect. You are the subject experiencing all of them. For more clarity on this, I would recommend reading my Blog "Who Am I" [https://www.clickreflect.com/post/who-are-you]
Now, Happiness on the other hand is not even a feeling. It is a state of existence.
The Happiness I am talking about here is that of Existing itself.
Consider this:
Something exists. A bottle of water on the table exists. A tree outside my window exists. I, in this body exist. You reading this blog behind a screen, exist.
Does existence in itself can ever be unhappy?
If you feel so, think deeper.
The answer is no.
Existence by itself can never be unhappy.
It is our mind that labels objects that come and go in our life as good and bad, happiness and unhappiness, etc.
The fact of existence, which is 100% evident to us all the time, is nothing but happiness.
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