Are the simple pleasures of life really as simple as they seem?

We ask the experts to explain how we arrived at a very complex definition of the little joys in life and what we can do to deal with it

Not too long ago, I was scrolling through Instagram and I paused at an image that listed out the ‘simple joys of life’. At first, there was nothing problematic with it; in fact it had all the makings of a feel-good post–soothing hues, cute illustrations and fun fonts. But as I started making a mental note of all the little things, I found myself feeling confused. One of the activities mentioned casually alongside smelling the roses and lighting a candle was strawberry-picking, something that I–and several others–wouldn’t exactly define as easy or accessible. This is far from the first time that I’ve come across something like this.

For a while now, social media platforms have been flooded with content that complicates simple pleasures not only by exposing us to a very broad, unrelatable definition of them but also to a multitude of ways in which we can experience them. Wouldn’t your morning coffee be a lot nicer if it was made with carefully roasted beans and an elaborate machine that the influencer you religiously follow used in their recent reel? To better understand how we’ve arrived at these complex definitions and what we can do about them, we reached out to experts, from authors to life coaches, and here’s what they had to say.

The commercialisation of happiness?

The chief (and most concerning) contributor to this convoluted view of the little things in life is our changing perception of happiness. If the question of how I would define happiness was posed to me in the past, I would veer towards words like ‘feeling’ or ‘emotion’ but today, it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to describe it as a commodity. As people are becoming more vocal about their growing discontent, brands are seeing this as an opportunity to create products and expensive experiences that promise to fix these feelings or bring joy. What makes these options even harder to resist is that they are frequently presented to us through the eyes of influencers or public figures that we’ve come to trust and adore.

“Everything today seems like it can be bigger, better and larger than life. All the marketing that we see and absorb, including influencer marketing and ads, makes us believe that happiness is something we experience when we purchase the product being marketed,” says author and coach Meher Mirchandani. Her point of view is evidenced in the many visuals that tell us we can master the art of mindfulness and find inner peace at a remote resort in an exotic destination. This representation, which could sometimes set you back by several thousand dollars, is not rooted in reality. In her book What Now? (2017), Yael Shy explains, “The magic of mindfulness in the “in-between moments” of our life is that we don’t need any special gear, quiet space and complex instructions to practice it. We can bring meditation to meet us wherever we are, whatever we are doing, right in the middle of our crazy lives.” This is not to say that we have to detach from material pleasures; our happiness is just not entirely dependent on them.

It’s not you, it’s me

The problem, however, is not with the messaging alone but also with the ways in which it is delivered. Content on social media platforms has its perks–it’s snackable and available to everyone–but it is not without its perils. What we see is not only often excessively edited but is also devoid of disclaimers or exceptions, and is based on a one-size-fits-all assumption. “Everyone has their own experiences and they are excited to share them, which is great, but it’s also important to know how to share an experience. There’s a big difference in expressing what works for you than telling someone what the prescription is. What I find exciting or calming may not be the same for someone else. There’s an increase in coaches and experts in the wellness space and for the average person, it’s becoming difficult to find their centre,” says Rajeev Daswani, conscious coach and founder of A Happiness Coaching Centre in Dubai.

Parul Doshi, a psychologist based out of Mumbai, attests to this. “Technology attaches and overexposes us to other’s experiences and this moves us away from self-introspection,” she explains. What this eventually results in is a short-lived, rather than sustained, sense of joy because we’re force-fitting a formula that’s designed for someone else into our lives. “It’s tricky. When we see something online, we’re essentially building a story in our minds and we then seek to replicate that in real life. The joy doesn’t come from the experience itself but from successfully recreating what we are told we should be experiencing,” says life coach and healer Lamya Lalvani.

Combatting the confusion

So how then do we strip back the excess and experience life just the way we like it? In her book, Shy shares many methods which can help one break out of what Buddhists call the ‘comparing mind’–something that’s kicked into gear when we assess our everyday lives against someone’s carefully curated Instagram grid–and most of them tie back to reevaluating our relationship with technology and building pauses to process the information presented to us. Daswani subscribes to a similar strategy. According to him, what alleviates the pressure to adopt the overwhelming number of options available to us is an awareness of our freedom to pick and choose. “The problem arises when there’s mindless consumption. Think of it as a buffet. In a buffet, you have all kinds of food and you can select what you like; you don’t eat everything. Similarly, there are many choices in wellness but the final decision should always be yours. Somewhere, we’ve forgotten that every human has their own metre. We have to ask ourselves whether we resonate with what we’re seeing,” concludes Daswani.

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