You, Happier

I was watching a Best Buy commercial today and was struck by their slogan: “You, Happier”. They seem to be suggesting that if you happen to be depressed, lonely, dissatisfied, or even just a little bit unhappy, the solution is to come and buy some new electronic component. Surely this can give someone a little happiness for a little while – but everyone runs into the same problem I had when I would get a new NES game as a kid: after a week, it’s just not as much fun. Then, inevitably, we have to run to the next thing in order to get that temporary rush of happiness, and the cycle repeats indefinitely.

If we’re uncomfortable, scared, alone, or depressed, it’s so easy to turn on some sort of media or do some sort of activity in order to distract ourselves from our real problems. Then, when the novelty has worn off, we have to find the next thing to distract us and numb us to reality – this distraction could even be found in the form of interaction, romantic or otherwise, with others.

Is this really a way we should be satisfied to live? Simply running from our problems and trying to pretend they aren’t there is to live in denial. We should face ourselves and realize something really is wrong, realize our attempts to satisfy our dissatisfaction repeatedly fail, and ask why. If we’re honest, we’ll realize the solution is not something we ourselves or even others are capable of delivering.

Let’s consider the words of Christ:

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
- John 4:10-14, ESV