Is It Possible to Be Happy in This Life as a Consumer?

In today's world, people are in a great consumption frenzy. The endeavour to be happy by consuming and buying is a great dilemma and delusion for today's people! We now see in every moment of life that people are trying to be happy by spending and consuming more money. But happiness, true love is not a priceless phenomenon.

All humanity has paid the price of the technological change presented to us after the industrial revolution in a way by experiencing moral drifts. Nevertheless, in a rampant capitalist and militarist world order, this drift continues unabated. This drift has thrown humanity, which has lost its foundations of meaning to a great extent, into a deep well of meaninglessness. The crisis of meaning that started in modern times has deepened even more with the recent times called postmodern. Today, a war has been declared on religion and ideologies, and for this reason, the network of meanings derived from them has lost its value. All human and sublime values have taken their share from this drift. In such a society, which is now focussed on consumption, it seems quite difficult to easily obtain meaning and purpose!

One of the most important reasons for the meaninglessness we are in is that people have nothing to live for, even though they have many things to live for. We all have beautiful, well-equipped and expensive vehicles, but we have no purpose. Because what is insistently dictated to us is: "Don't think and produce for a living, just consume." This consumption pushes us into a process in which we do not think before and after. Rather than questioning the meaning of life and where we belong, we focus on the meaninglessness of the world with the anger of what we cannot have.

At this point, reducing meaning and values to temporary goals and measurable values unfortunately makes us strangers to the world and the truth. Society now thinks and believes that it is happy by CONSUMING. We know from our social life that many people say that they feel happier and relieved from stress when they shop. 

The truth is that we are drifting in the world. While looking for something to hold on to about ourselves and the world, we are drifting away from the point we want to reach. Even the addresses in our pockets, high acquaintances, credit cards with plenty of limits cannot prevent this drift. But on the other hand, we instinctively resist this unwanted journey. We are looking for a harbour that will protect us, be good for us, relieve our stress and breathe heavenly freshness into our souls. We witness that fashion giants or technology bosses give their own essential answers to this search. We stubbornly and insistently listen to them in the media, on the street and in our living rooms that we will become a completely different person with the winter combinations they suggest, that our world will change with the latest four-camera mobile phone, that if we spray that perfume, all the attention will be on us. We believe in all this and apply what they say. The only thing that pushes us into this drift is meaninglessness.

We are in a great meaninglessness. We have forgotten what we came to the world for, what to do and where to go. When we forget where we are going, the number of malicious people guiding us increases. If people get rid of the strange responsibilities and ideologies imposed on them and think about why they were created and why they exist in this world, they will realise that consumption is not a cure for their own resentments. A meaningful life can only be lived to the extent that we can do something for the other, that we can be a breath of fresh air for someone else. One will find true happiness and satisfaction only through healthy bilateral relationships and favours, not through credit cards.

In the globalised world, a single culture has been formed, especially in consumption. It is a fact that the desire of a child in Kenya and a child in Siirt or London is to buy the same computer game or the jersey of the same football team. In our world, the imposition of a monotonous life format and everything is becoming more and more the same. The number of people who stand against this hell of sameness is also decreasing. We see fewer and fewer people around us who are unique, different, with distinctive physical and emotional characteristics, whom society sometimes labels as weird. I call these people "people with an eccentric and rebellious spirit". People who create difference and innovation with their looks, posture, what they say, the plastic comb in their back pocket, their oaks, their leather briefcase, their fountain pen, the way they utilise their free time, the beekeeping books they read are disappearing. In the autumn of my life, I am making a lot of effort to be somewhere among this group of people. Because what makes human beings and existence special and sustains them is difference.

Movement (motion), progress and meaning arise from this difference. Therefore, unfortunately, the things that make us happy have started to resemble each other. A good house, a car, clothes, a marriage proposal in a luxurious place. But this state of sameness will bring the end of our genuine happiness. It is a fact that we cannot be truly happy because people are out of their own selves; they have moved away from thinking and started to imitate each other. The real issue here is our commitment to the happiness and goals that are put in front of us, leaving our own pursuit of happiness, goals and ideals. When we set goals for ourselves that are not suitable for the human spirit and contrary to our nature, we cannot be happy. We should struggle to be more ourselves and get to know ourselves better. In short, we should discover ourselves and reformat ourselves if possible...