If you're happy and you know it...

When did we become such wimps? Such complainers?

I'm reading a book called Pachinko which is about a bunch of Koreans who live in Japan and are treated horribly. It is set all throughout the 20th century- starting in 1907 or so and I have just gotten past World War II. Their lives were so hard.  Though it isn't just a hard life for them, it is a hard life for everyone. They had to work nonstop and had next to nothing.

So why is it that nowadays we have so much more, and work a lot less and have all these modern day conveniences and are even more unhappy?

Honestly, I don't think we are actually unhappier than they were. I think the difference is that they just accepted being miserable as part of their existence and we think we should be/ deserve to be happy.

My theory is that we actually ARE happier on whole, but we want to be happy ALL the time which just isn't going to happen. Happiness is just a feeling and it comes and goes just like anger, jealousy, sadness, etc.

So if we use being miserable as our baseline then we will appreciate our moments of happiness more. But if we use pure joy and happiness as our baseline we will be upset every time it slips back down to miserableness.