What is your turning point about the happiness index curve?

In this impetuous era, on the one hand, people's desires are rapidly stimulated under unprecedented circumstances, on the other hand, the rapid improvement of living standards has not made people feel too satisfied and happy, but has made many people have more worries and fears than before.

People worry that they don't have enough money to meet the needs of the elderly, that their children can't receive the best education because of lack of money, that they lose the possibility of future success and happiness, and that they don't have enough money to resist possible diseases or accidents in the future. In short, they worry about themselves, their parents and their children. ...

In order to resist all kinds of worries and fears, many people spare no effort to pursue wealth, in order to obtain more wealth, in order to obtain more capital and happiness for themselves.

Many people applaud the idea of trying their best to pursue huge wealth, and many people are excited and honored by the rapid increase of their wealth. With the accumulation of more and more wealth, people have indeed accumulated more material security for a happy life, but with the material security of a happy life, does it mean that they can get more happiness at the same time?

With the rapid economic development in China, people's living standards and income levels have generally improved qualitatively, but many sociological and psychological survey data show that many people's happiness has decreased.

According to the data from the National Epidemiology Hospital, the incidence of anxiety in China has increased from 1%-2% in the 1980s to 13%, and the incidence of mental disorders and depression has increased from 0.05% 20 years ago to 6% now. People can't be anxious and depressed at the same time, but they can feel very happy. Anxiety and depression occupy people's hearts, so happiness.

Facts show that wealth is not absolutely positively related to happiness. Sociologists have also conducted in-depth investigation and study on the relationship between wealth and happiness, and obtained the following happiness index curve:

People's survival needs the most basic material conditions. In the case of extreme lack of living materials, people's happiness is also extremely low. With the increase of wealth, people's survival needs are more and more satisfied, and happiness increases with the increase of wealth.

However, with the further increase of wealth, people's happiness no longer increases with the increase of wealth, but shows a downward trend.

It is not difficult for us to understand the reasons for the decline in happiness.

For the average person, there is no extraordinary ability to earn money, no luck in winning the lottery, and no ancestral mines. If you want to get more huge wealth beyond your survival needs, you must first look around for God-given opportunities. Even if you have the opportunity, you should work hard. Needless to say, there are difficulties and hardships, so your happiness has declined.

For those lucky people who are capable, lucky and blessed, they may easily acquire huge wealth. However, although huge wealth and ordinary wealth are both wealth, the difference between them is that huge wealth has great magic that ordinary wealth does not have. Therefore, as a rich man, we must always be careful to control this great magic, so as not to be swallowed up by this magic, and mental work will also reduce happiness. In extreme cases, we can learn something from the fate of Xu Wenqiang and Feng Chengcheng in Shanghai.

Although people's overall happiness curve is basically the same, everyone's happiness index curve is still very different. According to the situation of different types of people, we can add two curves, B and C, to the happiness index curve of the general population.

Observing curve B, we can see that the characteristics of this kind of people it represents are that they are extremely sensitive to the increase of wealth in the initial stage, and their happiness will be greatly improved because of the increase of wealth, and will soon reach the maximum peak, and then their happiness will soon show a downward trend with the increase of wealth.

So these people obviously represent a very small number of wise men and sages, such as Socrates who lamented that there are so many things I don't need in this world, such as Yan Hui's saying that "people can't bear to worry, but people don't change their fun", and Liu Yuxi's saying that "I am humble, but I am virtuous" ... Another outstanding feature of them is that the height of their highest point of happiness greatly exceeds that of ordinary people.

The height of the happiness peak of these wise men and sages is because their rich and broad spiritual world greatly surpasses ordinary people, as Schopenhauer said-"The happiness that a person can get belongs to him, which is stipulated by his personality from the beginning. The scope of a person's spiritual ability especially determines his ability to appreciate advanced happiness. "

In sharp contrast to curve B, curve C clearly represents this kind of people whose demand for wealth seems insatiable. Their lifelong pursuit seems to be to accumulate wealth. The more they accumulate, the better. The accumulation of wealth almost equals their happiness, but we can see that the height of their happiness peak is very low.

A large part of these people's happiness comes from the amount of wealth, and the other part is the happiness brought by the use of wealth. Because almost all their efforts are devoted to the pursuit of wealth, their spiritual world is poor, so their fun can only be limited to simple entertainment projects with low spiritual needs. Their limited mental ability limits their ability to appreciate advanced happiness. Therefore, no matter how great wealth they get, the peak of their happiness is only slightly improved.

I once met a couple, both of whom were very frugal. Men often take part-time jobs in their spare time to earn extra money, while women use two rooms at home to open a mahjong room. Mahjong hall is full of guests every day, business is booming, people's mahjong tiles rattle, their mouths are smoking, women entertain at home, and each table is charged by time. Their shrewdness and hard work really make their wealth accumulate rapidly, which really makes many people envy them.

Because they are usually busy running their own businesses, they rarely ask about their children, and their children have nowhere to go after school and no one to take care of them. Husband and wife often collect money here, and then conveniently take out a hundred-dollar bill for their son to go out to eat and drink casually.

I happened to meet an old acquaintance in the street the other day. When chatting, I mentioned the recent situation of the couple. He was crying.

It turned out that the woman had lung cancer because she operated a mahjong room and often entertained guests all night, inhaling secondhand smoke for a long time.

A more serious blow is yet to come, because the husband and wife have neglected their children for a long time, and their academic performance is very poor. The couple paid a high price for their children to go to college. Naturally, children can't find their own jobs after graduation, so the husband and wife paved the way with money and relationships and tried their best to arrange their sons in the formal system. Not only did they do a decent job, but they also had some power in their hands.

Originally, I thought that the road paved with money would bring children a smooth and happy life. However, because children have long been accustomed to a high-consumption life, they soon found a way to get money from the management loopholes of the unit. He used his power to misappropriate huge amounts of public funds to reward anchors and travel together. Not long ago, he was arrested for news and put in jail.

Although this kind of people's inner desire to pursue the wealth represented by the C curve is inexhaustible, and they can be doubly happy because of the rapid growth of wealth, their curves not only can't jump out of the law of the inflection point of the happiness curve, but sometimes this kind of curve will show a cliff-like decline because of the low spiritual quality, because the world is in a causal cycle, and the law of things is that extremes meet.

Most people will avoid taking the sad road like type C people, but it is extremely difficult to get rid of the inner contradictions and struggles-on the one hand, they want to lift their happiness peak higher, on the other hand, they are worried and afraid about the future, and it is difficult to get rid of their desire for money.

It is difficult for people to get rid of their worries and fears about the future crisis, so they always like to make themselves feel practical and comforted by desperately occupying more wealth. But in fact, many psychological studies show that most of the future misfortunes that people are worried about have not happened, but many people have formed psychological diseases because of excessive anxiety. Excessive psychological stress and physical fatigue may cause people's mental breakdown, make people's immune system function decline, thus making people prone to various diseases.

In fact, the world is changing in uncertainty, so we have established various social security systems. However, even with the social security system, human ability is not strong enough to resist all risks and disasters, let alone everyone's ability. Especially in the face of major disasters, it is even more difficult to resist on our own.

For example, the earth on which we live, who knows where to insure it? Because of this, the wandering earth written by Liu Cixi gave us so many strange imaginations and shocks. It is not that the more wealth, the more happiness. It is not so much a question of personal ability as a question of philosophy.

Therefore, everyone needs foresight and preparation for a rainy day, but don't forget that our real quality of life depends more on how we spend every day in our present life. We can't ignore the specific connotation of a happy life and inner peace, harmony and beauty because of the pursuit of the conditions and guarantee of a happy life. Especially under the current level and conditions of the development of social productive forces, the material life of most people today has reached a well-off level.

For example, it is really not mainly the question of which school district to buy with money that is related to the happiness of a child's life. Parents accompany their children to grow up bit by bit, which is a hundred times more important than any primary school.

For example, for a person's happy experience, what really matters is not what car to drive or where to go for a holiday. For a happy experience, the richness of one's spiritual world is much more important than the luxury. In particular, we also see that the depletion of energy and the destruction of the environment caused by excessive human desires and demands have just made the earth more and more difficult to load and brought more troubles and disasters to mankind.

Also, it is not a matter of how much huge wealth is left to parents in their later years, so that they will not die of serious illness in the future.

A few years ago, Yu Juan, a young female teacher at Fudan University, realized with her last life that "at the critical point of life and death, any overtime work (long-term staying up late equals chronic suicide) puts too much pressure on herself, and the demand for buying a house and a car is a cloud. If you have time, spend more time with your children, buy a pair of shoes for your parents with the money from buying a car, don't desperately change a big house, spend more time with the people you love, and live in a warm place. "

Therefore, parents want their children to live in peace, health and health, rather than let themselves recover from serious diseases.

So, where is the turning point of your happiness index curve?