I had lunch with my friend Yuan today, and he was just really happy telling me about how he enjoys the time he has been spending with his one month old son. He told me he had a sort of revelation upon observing the peace and satisfaction on his son’s face after napping and feeding. He told me that we really don’t require much to be happy, and that it was all very simple. All these things that we chase as adults like nice cars and other possessions, social status and whatever, they’re actually not necessary. This idea isn’t really news to me as it’s pretty common for people to say stuff like this all while continuing to pursue these these things anyway. What was fascinating to me, however, was the perspective from which he came from as he said this.

Children, and especially babies, are made happy by the simplest things. A baby is content with milk, sleep and being held and not much more. My friend also has a three and a half year old daughter. He drives an old beat-up car and his wife a newer, more luxurious car, but his daughter is equally happy travelling in either car. She hasn’t been taught yet to see distinctions in these things that adults often use as tools to prop themselves up over their peers. If we can just remind ourselves that the need we feel for all these extra things is fake, it’s amazing to think about how much less stressful our lives could be. It’s just so hard sometimes to take the time to stop in the middle of life and remember this.

I do continue to wonder how much of this desire for all this extra stuff is learned and how much is in fact innate. I guess there is a type of innocence that exists when you don’t have to fight for your own survival. When you’re a small child everything is provided for you and you feel safe under the protection of your parents. When you become responsible for your own survival and compete against others for scarce resources it seems to become more important to assert your dominance over others and to secure your place within society. Maybe the pursuit of all these seemingly superfluous things and the desire to be accepted socially and to be seen as well-off is a leftover vestige of some built-in evolutionary survival-based behavior… I wonder…