How the fuck did we get here?

I was talking to my grandma about what life was like a few decades ago. We were specifically talking about marriages. They were a celebration. You'd have your closest relatives arrive at your house a month before the wedding and the preparations begin. The lead up to the marriage was some of the best parts according to her. All the people you love gathering at your house, helping you prepare for the big event and having a good time. Good vibes all around. This is nothing like the experiences I've had. Your best friends not being able to make it because of work. Your cousins not being able to make it because they have exams. Your aunt and uncle not being able to make it because they live in another country. Hell, the bride and groom themselves have to struggle to make themselves available for a week and head back to you guessed it. Work. How the fuck did we get here ?

Somewhere along the line we seem to have messed up. Marriage is just one of the examples which comes to mind. How have we trapped ourselves in this cycle ? How have we managed to make everything revolve around money ? The end goal always seems to be how much money we can make. We are now stuck in this system which we can't get out of. We end up spending our entire lives 'working' to earn as much money as possible. 

As a society, we've equated happiness with the amount of money we make and we work on that our entire lives. Every time I think of happiness, I remember a quote from 3 Idiots. "Dost fail ho jaye toh dukh hota hair. Lekin dost first aa jaye toh zyada dukh hota hai"
Happiness is relative. Life was simple back in the day. The only competition you had were the people around you. I mean literally. You knew your life was pretty much the same as your neighbour's and their neighbour's. Passing high school was considered an achievement and even if you didn't, your life went on just fine. You didn't know what was happening on the other side of the world. Even if you were living a shit life, you didn't realize it because you didn't know that such a luxurious lifestyle existed. With the invention of the internet, everything changed. I now know there's some rich bastard living in a mansion. The moment we realize something better exists, it's only natural to want it. We start working towards getting there. The thing is, there's always gonna be something better. It doesn't matter how much I work or how much money I make, there will always be a possibility earning more. There's no end to this cycle. 

And the internet only amplifies this effect. I can now sit and watch everyone on Instagram posting their highlights and think that everyone's having a perfect life because all I see is people enjoying themselves. Well duh, no one posts stuff about the mundane stuff in their life. You get used to seeing people posting on this god awful app on a daily basis and curse yourself for not having the kind of "amazing" life which everyone else is having. I'll save the Instagram rant for some other time. 

At the end of the day, everyone seeks happiness and it's becoming that much more harder to achieve. There's no satisfying our desires because there's always something more. As much as we try to only focus on ourselves and what we want, it's almost impossible to do so in the world we live in. Sure it's much more comfortable and easier but that doesn't equate to happiness. Even the data suggests that people are getting less and less happy as time goes on. I wish I was born in an era where I could have experienced the simpler things in life. I will never know the joy of receiving a letter. We get everything we need almost instantly and there's no sense of excitement in it. I honestly find it hard to think of anything which excites me anymore. When I was young, buying clothes for a festival was a big deal. It's not anymore. I don't even look forward to festivals. There are very few things which truly excite me or make me happy. And I also know that I'm not the only one in this situation. Once again I'm asking you, how the fuck did we get here?

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