The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Happiness

The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Happiness

By Hasnain Shah

We are all chasing it. Some of us call it success, others call it peace. For most, it’s a word we whisper to ourselves late at night when the house is quiet and the phone stops glowing. Happiness. The word rolls easily off the tongue, like something light and effortless. But we don’t really know what it means anymore.

Society has repackaged happiness, wrapped it in glossy boxes, and placed a price tag on it. It’s not a feeling we cultivate—it’s a product we buy.

You can find it in the right apartment, the right skincare routine, the right morning smoothie. It’s hiding behind yoga mats and self-help books, behind social media filters that make life look like a sunrise that never ends. Somewhere along the way, we stopped believing happiness was something we could build. We started believing it was something we could own.

I used to think I was happy because I checked all the right boxes. I had the job that sounded impressive when I said it out loud. I posted pictures of brunches with friends, captioned with words like “grateful” and “vibes.” I followed motivational accounts that told me to “manifest abundance” and “choose joy.” It all looked convincing—until I realized I was constantly choosing, but never arriving.

The truth is, happiness marketed as a destination will always move the goalpost. Every time you think you’ve reached it, someone invents a newer, shinier version. You buy a phone, and a better one comes out in six months. You land a job, and someone your age becomes a millionaire. You go on a vacation, but the influencer who stayed in the same city found a more “authentic” spot. Happiness, as sold to us, is a treadmill with no finish line.

We’ve built a culture where joy is performative and contentment is conditional. We smile for cameras, not for moments. We celebrate “self-care” weekends, then return on Monday to burnout disguised as ambition. The world applauds hustle, not peace. Productivity is mistaken for purpose. Even rest has become a brand.

I once met a woman named Leila at a retreat. She wasn’t rich or famous or particularly interested in social media. She told me she had stopped trying to “be happy” years ago. Instead, she focused on being present. At first, I didn’t understand the difference. Happiness sounded bigger, more impressive—something worth chasing. But Leila said something that stayed with me:

“Happiness is what happens when you stop measuring your life against someone else’s.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Most of us don’t even know what truly makes us happy. We inherit the blueprint from advertisements, from friends, from the highlight reels of strangers. We spend decades building lives we don’t fully love, then wonder why the joy never lasts. We expect happiness to be constant—when in truth, it’s supposed to fluctuate. No one can live in perpetual sunlight. But the culture of consumption tells us that if we feel anything less than bliss, something’s wrong with us—and that we can fix it if we buy just one more thing.

Happiness has been turned into a subscription service.

We pay monthly fees in attention, in envy, in the slow erosion of self-worth. We scroll through curated feeds of other people’s joy and confuse it with proof that ours is missing. We forget that the picture we’re seeing was taken at just the right angle, with just the right filter, during a fleeting moment that may not exist anymore.

But happiness—the real kind—isn’t photogenic. It’s not loud or performative. It’s sitting with someone you love in silence and not needing to fill it. It’s being able to look at your reflection without flinching. It’s cooking dinner on a random Tuesday, laughing at a burnt meal, and realizing it doesn’t matter.

True happiness doesn’t demand attention. It’s not something we chase; it’s something we notice.

When I think about the lie we tell ourselves about happiness, I realize it’s not just society’s fault. It’s ours too. We keep buying the story because it’s easier than facing the truth—that real joy requires work. It requires discomfort, patience, and the courage to sit still. It requires saying no when the world tells you to want more.

Maybe happiness isn’t the goal after all. Maybe it’s the byproduct of a life lived honestly—one where you stop pretending to be fine and start being real.

The happiest people I’ve met aren’t the ones who have everything figured out. They’re the ones who’ve learned to live in the middle of their mess, who laugh through uncertainty, who understand that a full life isn’t always a perfect one.

And maybe that’s the greatest secret of all: happiness was never meant to be bought, chased, or achieved. It was meant to be felt—quietly, imperfectly, and freely, right where you are.