[One Thousand Characters a Day] Professor Seo Eunguk's 'Where Does Happiness Come From?' <2>

Editor's NoteWe live by excessively worrying about and anticipating the future. As a result, we fail to enjoy the present. High school students live solely to get into college, college students to secure a job, and middle-aged people to prepare for retirement and their children's success. Many people sprint full speed to become something in the future, but decades of research conclude that the happiness gained is not as great as expected. The reason is 'adaptation.' Because the pleasure felt from any experience diminishes over time, no matter what we obtain, happiness eventually stagnates like running on a treadmill. Professor Eun-guk Seo states in his book The Origin of Happiness, "Happiness is not solved by a 'one-shot' event. Since all pleasures soon vanish, feeling small joys multiple times is absolutely better than one big joy." Word count: 940.

If we compare happiness to a warm shower, our emotional system is like a showerhead with separate knobs for cold and hot water. Reducing factors of unhappiness is similar to turning off the cold water knob. This can make the shower water less cold but does not make it warmer. Many life conditions we pursue are like the cold water knob on this shower. They have a significant effect in making life less uncomfortable, but there is a limit to making it warm.

There is another flaw in our thinking. The moment a life change occurs and the concrete experience after that change settles are different. However, we do not properly distinguish between the two. Receiving an acceptance letter from the dreamed university is certainly a joyful event. But actually becoming a college student and spending lonely days under academic stress in an unfamiliar environment may not be very happy. Right after the semester starts, I often ask Yonsei University freshmen if they are still happy to have been admitted. Most respond with a blank expression, as if it is absurd, without answering.

In English, the difference between 'becoming' and 'being' is quite significant. Becoming the daughter-in-law of a chaebol family (becoming) and living day by day as that daughter-in-law (being) are very different stories. Yet, we focus only on the moment of glamorous transformation and do not think about the long time that constitutes that life afterward.

Therefore, people expect to be happy naturally after success, but in reality, they realize that there is little change in happiness as they live. They become embarrassed only then. They had only thought about the brief excitement of the celebration, not the long time after the party.

Many people overestimate the total amount of happiness that comes from life changes such as money or success. One reason is that they overlook the 'sustainability' aspect of happiness.

- Eun-guk Seo, The Origin of Happiness, 21st Century Books, 18,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.