The Happiness Trap

The Stone Age man’s mind evolved to help him survive in a world fraught with danger and to ensure the continuation of the species. This predisposition proved to be useful and with the passing of centuries and millennia, the human mind became more and more able to make us perceive, see and foresee the dangers and pitfalls that are part of our very existence. This instinct has never stopped working for us and to this day its function is to constantly evaluate the situations that we find ourselves in, to quickly understand whether or not we are in danger. Even with the best intentions, the human mind is naturally prone to suffer: if we accept this fact and do not expect to change it, the quality of our very existence will increase.

If we only think of happiness as “feeling good”, we will not get very far, because feelings of pleasure are ephemeral, destined to disappear; if, on the other hand by happiness, we mean living a life that is rich and full of meaning, then things will start to look very different. In that case we will no longer strive to continuously experience fleeting moments of pleasure, but we will look to give a deeper meaning to our existence, remembering that a life lived to its fullest includes the whole range of human emotions, including pain.