Easy Street is not like Main Street. You don't have to work, you can pay people to do everything for you, you can do almost anything you please, and everyone has to treat you just the way you want or you can just tell them to take a hike.
Sounds like bliss. This must be happiness.
Yet I've known people who live on Easy Street and none of them seem half as happy as the people on Main Street.
What's going on here?
The magazine Atlantic has an article titled "There's More to Life Than Being Happy". It shows how confused we are about "happiness", which the article equates with self-indulgence, finally concluding that "givers" are better off than "takers". But what does that mean, "better off"? It means happier, of course. Happiness must be the only goal of life, but it depends on what you mean by it. Most of us tend to think of happiness as getting what we want, but as it turns out, that doesn't make us happy nearly as much as simply thinking of others more and thinking about ourselves less. You can pretty much tell if someone is happy by looking at their eyes, and based on that, it looks to me like selfish, self-indulgent people tend to be unhappy while unselfish, caring people tend to be a lot happier.
Unhappy people drink and happy people don't, in my experience. Unhappy people may drink to be happy but it only makes things worse, and drinking is probably what made them unhappy in the first place.
Drinking is easy: pour, drink, bliss, repeat.
But don't be fooled. The happiest people live a sober and fruitful life, nurturing and protecting those they care for.
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