Why life is so tough???
Answers
Answer:
A thousand years ago, if a king could foresee the lifestyle of an average middle class guy today he would have died of jealousy.
What took his horse-riding messenger a few weeks, we can accomplish in a few seconds with WhatsApp messenger. His portrait was probably made twice in his lifetime. We take 20 selfies before going to bathroom. Add to that our Maggi noodles in 2 minutes, 31 flavours of ice-cream at Baskin Robbins, and Netflix. We live in virtual heaven.
Yet we feel that life is hard. Why?
It boils down to the equation of happiness. What the hell is that?
Happiness = Reality - Expectations.
Ok, I admit I am being a little cheesy, but let us go with it for now. Humans have a tendency to quickly raise baseline expectations whenever things in life get better. Say you switch from a small sedan to a luxury SUV. You will feel happy for a few days, and then driving an SUV will become the baseline expectation, the ‘new normal’, so to say.
Now if you have to switch back from the SUV to your old sedan, you will be annoyed as hell. What happened? Objectively, you are just as well off as you were earlier, are you not?
As expectations go up, happiness goes down. This is why we feel that life is hard even though it may be getting objectively better.