What is Required for you to feel Happy and Content?

I often wonder what would be required for a person to feel Happy and Content. I know what makes one person happy and content, may not make another person happy and content. We might all live in the same country or on the same street or even in the same house, but we all have different life experiences, or we can interpret the same life experiences differently. For the most part our society conditioned us to believe that access to a continuous stream of increasing wealth and material goods is what is needed for a person to be happy and content. Children are being conditioned to equate material things with love. For example, some might think that they are loved, if their parents buy them the new iPhone and without it life is not worth living.  

What I realized is that this conditioning is often the main source of our misery and unhappiness. No matter how much increasing wealth and material goods we accumulate. It is never enough and adds more complexity to our lives. The fear of not being able to maintain or even acquire our increasing wealth and material goods often leads to increased unhappiness, misery, anxiety, and depression. Let me also say that not having any wealth can also lead to unhappiness, misery, anxiety, and depression. Or better still, not knowing what is needed by you to make you happy and content.  As a society we worship money, and we worship material goods. We have been conditioned to think we are nothing without it and everything with it. 

We also need to define the concept of what wealth is. Because being wealthy can mean different things to different people. No matters what situation we find ourselves in, it is our responsibility to come to terms with our lives and carve out our happiness and through that, find our contentment. If we can do that, then a man with little money can be happier and more content with life than a man who is conditioned to always chasing the continuous stream of increasing wealth and material goods that never materialized, like a dog chasing its own tail. 

A person in rural Jamaica who might live in a moderate house. He wakes up every morning, looks out on to the hills and basks in the simplicity and beauty of life and nature. Not needing anything, he has food, shelter and a good standard of living. This person can be happier than the man living on the Upper East Side of New York City, who wakes up at 5 AM to catch the pack downtown train in to get work on Wall Street, where he spends the next 15 hours, before heading home exhausted, only to wake up and do it repeatedly. The problem comes when the person in Rural Jamaica sees no value in his environment and the simplicity of his life. He thinks the only way to live is like the man in New York City because that is how our society conditioned him to think. Concrete is Progress and Nature, and the environment is backwards, third world and represents poverty. Even though he has everything he needs. He has leisure, he is healthy, well fed, roof over his head, access to good healthy food from his yard and fresh air to breathe but he is unhappy, miserable, suffers from anxiety, and depression because he sees no value in the life he is living.

SSL probe after millions go missing from Usain Bolt's account

• Standard of Living - The degree of wealth and material comfort available to a person or community.
• My definition of Standard of Living - The degree of sustainable wealth and material comfort needed to be Happy and Content.
• Entitlement - the fact of having a right to something. The belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment by any means necessary. 
• Greed - Intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.

There are people who think they have a God giving right to have instant access to a continuous unsustainable stream of increasing wealth and material goods. They want this access by any means necessary and with minimal work. They are not prepared to put in the time and effort to follow the right path to success. These people are consumed by greed, selfishness, self-importance and a callous disregard for all morals, values, and human life. This is what is driving the increasing crimes across the island because no amount of money can make these people happy and content. Living the high life and in the fast lane requires a continuous stream of increasing wealth and material goods, which is unsustainable.

It is one thing when a person who is dirt poor living a sufferer’s lifestyle, gets fed up with that lifestyle and decides to break the law. Yes, it is dead wrong, no excuse but one can at least use the mother of all overused excuse “Poverty” as a reason why. However, when we have very educated middle and upper middle-class professionals, some of whom boast foreign education, living what should be a comfortable happy and content lifestyle, breaking the law to steal millions, then there is no excuse for that. It is nothing but pure uncontrolled greed, coupled with no morals or values. They can never be happy or content because they do not know how. They believe money is the only thing that brings any meaning and value to their pathetic lives. They are addicted to money. 

One of the main goals of Permaculture is to create a sustainable food production system.  Another goal of Permaculture is to design the need for labour out of the process because a perfectly designed, well balanced sustainable food production system would have very little need for labour and in permaculture we do not regard harvesting as labour.

  

I would like to take that concept further by creating a sustainable living environment and designing the want for money out of the process. This is not a new concept as many all over the world is doing it by creating an isolated sustainable homestead or communities. They are living off the grid and not missing the trappings of the modern world. All that matters in life, is that you are Happy and Content.

Progress?

More Progress?