Happiness?

           After reading Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents” I realized it is hard for us as humans to really have and keep, happiness. Happiness is truly hard to achieve. It is said that people “strive for happiness” (Freud 42) and that everyone wants to “…become happy and remain so.” (42) But how do we as people get to that point, how do we know that we have reached the point in our life where we have “achieved total happiness” I don’t think we ever can do that. I believe that humans work so hard in trying to get something that never will truly be theirs. Happiness cannot be something you can just pick up. These are all questions that went running through my head; however after reading the book, I realized...I had a whole new set of questions whirling around. Freud announces that we as a society do not really feel great happiness. We only do things that make us temporarily happy in which we believe that is our true happiness. He states that we hold back on our true goals, that we do things that our pleasurable for ourselves but only temporarily? So when we do feel happy and are in a good mood, are we truly happy? Or is the sense of our happiness playing a trick on us? Freud is trying to explain to us as a society that we buy frivolous things to make ourselves happy; however we are not TRULY happy, only happy in the moment. Now I feel like I should be questioning my own happiness, when I buy a pair of shoes am I REALLY happy? (I love my shoes) so why shouldn’t I be happy? Is my happiness playing a trick on me? Although reading the text made me think of a million and one questions, one thing I can take away from reading Freud’s work is separating wants and needs. People just need to think more clearly on what is important in life and what isn’t. We all live in a society that solely bases instincts on “wants” instead of “needs” even though many of us don’t mean it to be that way. I still believe that I can be happy with my life, however Freud did make me think about many things and the way our society thinks, is portrayed and ultimately controlled. I don’t fully understand and agree with Freud however I know that the next time I go to the mall, I should just skip the shoe stores for a while.