Happy Without

If we talk about happiness, we usually mention, “How many things have you got?” This means happiness depends on materialism. So we can see that people, including us, strive for material things to fulfill our happiness. But that is just temporary happiness, it will not last long, or forever, as we can see in our daily life; things change, our desire changes and chases after another thing.

The Buddha realised that happiness with materialism causes unsatisfactoriness afterward. Therefore, he taught the world to look inward and see how many things they could be happy without. This is an idea of living a simple life and we can be easily happy without materialism; we can be content with what we have and just be satisfied with it. To give an example, there is an inspiring story which can illustrate this well. Here is the story:

Socrates was a philosopher who believed that the wise person would live a simple and contented life. He himself lived like that and would not even wear shoes; yet he constantly fell under the spell of the marketplace and would go there often to look at all the wares on display. One of his friends was surprised that he would not buy any stuff, and wondered why he went there. One day he asked Socrates why he went there if he would not buy anything. Socrates said, "I love to go there and discover how many things I am perfectly happy without".

This is a good example of living happily without. How do you live your life? Do you chase after materialism? If you do, there is an expression which can remind you that “You never catch up with materialism”. It is true that you will never be happy with what you have. But if you live a simple and contented life, you can find happiness easily as was said by Socrates, “How many things I am perfectly happy without”. And how about you, how many things are you perfectly happy without?