Despite all the political infighting, gun violence, financial woes, and rising taxes, our midwestern city has seen a tremendous amount of growth and new construction. Highrise buildings are popping up like mushrooms wherever you look. Just take your pick, look ahead, and you will see a crane of some sorts on the horizon.
Where I live we enjoy abundant and relatively peaceful times and with them come high-tech and ever so elaborate buildings and workplaces. On the outside, they are engineering marvels of contemporary architecture, yet at a closer look, they rather resemble anthills or fishbowls where meticulously groomed greenery and transplanted nature is a mere artifact or design feature to make us feel as if we were closer to nature, while within steel and glass. Feels like a sham to me. It’s a pursuit of authenticity, search of authenticity, but not quite authenticity…

If one desperately desires a new car and buys a 2020 model to make themselves feel better, that feeling may very well become reality. At least until a 2021 model comes out and that gorgeous new car one just bought suddenly becomes “that old thing”, while one sets their sights on the 2021 model.

The inherent question arises: if it were true that things make us happier, why do we all fall into this endless trap of incessant hunt for better, bigger, newer, shinier objects? Do they really make us happy? What if our pursuit of happiness through acquiring new things is just a fantasy we are all living out in an endless loop? A tantalizing thought.

What if one would stop for a moment and just be grateful for what they have right now? Would one keep searching, hunting and collecting? Of course not. Their mind would probably melt and they’d wake up from the “bigger, better, faster” game we all play.

Lesson learned?
Find out what authentic happiness is. Quit playing the game…