" Any of this sound familiar? I"m sure it does. Everyday, and everywhere we look we are constantly bombarded by this material idea of happiness. Without those six pack abs, or that new shampoo that improves thickness and shines, or those clothes that don't compliment your figure, you must be one sad and depressed individual. How can you possibly be happy if you don't have any of the things that are suppose to make you happy? Well, maybe you are one of the lucky ones who can afford to throw your money away at this superficial idea of happiness, and for a while you actually believe that you are indeed happy. Then one day you see the add for the newer and faster computer, or you notice that even with all those beauty products you still don't resemble that 22 year old you once use to be. As Ciardi brings out in is essay, we as a westernized civilization can't seem to get it through our heads that happiness does not lie down this road. These things that are supposed to make us happy do just the opposite. We will never have the newest and best model of whatever product we desire, and we more than likely won't resemble those models in magazines. .
Now if you take out the binoculars and gaze very far down the happiness spectrum you can see a holy man peacefully sitting in his temple with his eyes closed and meditating. This man is of course the eastern happiness icon. Clothes, money, cars, these all have no appeal to such a man. He desires nothing and is therefore happy because he wants nothing. I agree with Ciardi in these two view points - western and eastern - of happiness. Either we want too much for our wallets to supply, or we want nothing. However, are we really just on this endless uphill road of continuously wanting, and wanting, and wanting? We will never reach a plateau, or much less a peak?.
Ciardi states that happiness lies only in life engaging difficulties. Any happiness we seem to feel or experience is only by the means of struggling to accomplish something, and once we have conquered a goal, the thrill we feel will never last that long because there's always another peak waiting to be climbed.
