Happiness is just around the corner…

What makes me happy?

As a little reflection exercise this week, I wrote down what my ideal day would look like.

It included time with family, friends, a beautiful fresh walk in the park, cosy reading by the fire, all started with a fabulous cup of coffee.

There was no aspiration for anything out of my reach, or to own anything I didn't already have.

That's what my happiness looks like.

It's my birthday at the end of the week, and I'd ordered a dress online. The packaging stated it was 'Delivering Happiness'. I received my first birthday card from an online fashion brand. The message inside read, "Hope you have the best day. Get yourself something you really want."

Both companies were suggesting I wasn't happy unless I owned something I didn't yet have. That is what the whole concept of advertising is, isn't it; Buy this product, then I'll be happy... If only I owned, or experienced, something new, then I'll be happy.

But we all know, deep down, that's just not true, not long lasting happiness anyway.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z"l, put it beautifully in the chapter 'Consuming Happiness' in his book, Morality:

"Can it really be a sane conclusion that happiness means the must-have designer handbag, or the wildly expensive handmade Swiss watch that you 'never really own', merely 'look after for the next generation', but which tells the time no better than the one you can buy for almost nothing?

… by constantly inflaming our discontents, an advertising-driven, consumer society that ostensibly aims at happiness becomes in the end a system for the production and distribution of unhappiness.

As a former director of General Motors Research Lab once put it, advertising is the 'organised creation of dissatisfaction'.

Happiness is good for us, but it is bad for business."

As we enter this manic crazy holiday season with advertising on overdrive for the consumption and over-consumption of things we don't yet have, I wish us all really wonderful days ahead, with the things we already have, and the happiness that already exists inside all of us shining brightly.