It seems quite evident that we all seek happiness in our lives. If we understand this as the dictionary of the Royal Academy of Language does: State of pleasant spiritual and physical satisfaction. The thing is more evident. Who does not want this? Who does not want to be satisfied with his life?
Achieving happiness is a difficult path that not everyone can achieve. The different religions and ideologies give us paths that claim to be the best to reach it. Economistic spirituality is not far behind it and it also offers us a path of salvation, a path to follow to achieve that long-awaited happiness. Well-being is the key to this journey and as we achieve it, happiness will be within our reach.
Well-being, following the dictionary of the RAE, is the “comfortable life or supplied with everything that leads to having a good time and with tranquility.” Well-being is achieved thanks to the fact that we have a supply of goods that is sufficient to have that calm life that allows us to have a good time. Is this or not the basis of happiness?
When economistic spirituality refers us to well-being, pointing it out as the right way to achieve happiness, it is telling us that what we have to do to be happy is to have more things. Only in this way can we increase our well-being since it depends on what we have. This spirituality tries to achieve an infinite longing, such as happiness, with goods and services that are finite, with what we have or that we can acquire or enjoy.
However, the promise of happiness through well-being is fallacious. Although a minimum of well-being is essential to be able to lead a full and happy life (if we do not even have enough to eat, we are hardly going to be able to have a pleasant life spiritually and physically) seeking satisfaction only in having more things, it is a futile effort for two main reasons. The first because we will always be able to have more and this causes continued dissatisfaction to the extent that we are never satisfied.
The second has to do with the spiritual life. Finding the meaning of life, feeling comfortable with oneself, leading a life integrated between what we do and what we think, cannot be achieved with properties, with things, with experiences … It is only achieved with an internalization path that has little to do with our incomes and properties.
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