 Why don't wonderful things make us happy when I was a kid? I Dreamed of a TV watch. I love this idea. I was gonna have in the future a Watch that would have a little TV screen on it so I could watch TV from anywhere and Back in the 80s and 90s. You know this was a dream of Utopian future where we can all watch TV on our watches and Here we are we can all watch TV on our watches not only just Broadcast TV or cable TV as I imagined it back then like Maybe 50 maybe a hundred channels We can watch YouTube on our watches. We can watch millions of videos for of anything we want and But why am I not so excited about it? I mean I partly I grew up and my Enthusiasm for TV watches is not as great as it once was at that time but somehow it's just Having this thing come to life It it's cool for a moment, but it just doesn't Make me happy now, and here's another one Think of how music was back then You know you wanted to get some music you had to go buy a record buy a CD Or maybe you get a mixtape custom made to get specific music that you want just getting a song was a Difficult thing like if you couldn't just Hear a song it it would play on the radio if you're lucky or You could buy it or you could get it made on a tape But none of those are necessarily going to be simple, especially if it's a very obscure thing but now again We have YouTube where we can listen to any song we want instantly It's like having You know I sometimes like to imagine that the technology we have now and Sort of imagine what it would mean in that earlier time like what it would be like it would be like having a record collection of millions of records a vast warehouse of LPs of records that you could then Instantly play whenever you want And on the road too you can play it on your watch too, of course. Why not? so You know I could go on we all have our things that particularly stand out for us if we think about the technology we have compare it to what was before and think well What are the things that really are the most surprising and amazing about the way things are now? But why aren't We happier why? Is it not Filling us with joy now, of course if when we lose access to YouTube or to our TV watch or our phone or whatever then we are Experiencing probably great frustration. We're very unhappy when we don't get it But it's like we've just readjusted to this new baseline the baseline is we have instant access to Every major song ever written every major movie or TV show ever made we have instant access to watch it at any time That's that's our reality right now Video call we can have video calls that there was another thing that was science fiction really although was there were some Attempts to get video calling going back in those old days, but Now we can communicate with anybody by video talk but It just doesn't feel that exciting So I'd like to know why I I mean one answer is it's simply a matter of our baseline adjusting That we can't be happy about anything because whenever we get something new that just we had this brief moment of oh That's that's great, but then we readjust to it as being our new baseline so We simply cannot preserve that feeling of being happy about some new thing. I mean hey flush toilets Cars and other fast vehicles You know the ability to fly a plane around the world and Show up on the other side of the world almost anywhere within 24 hours It's absolute magic and then the list goes on of all the things that are magic about This 21st century life but for some reason We don't really care it just doesn't really Make a dent in terms of our mindset. It doesn't Make us feel like we're living in a magical wonderland It just feels normal Why is that I Would be curious to hear your comments. I Think maybe part of it is just Getting we get used to things so quickly and maybe part of it is just that none of those things are actually very important Whether we can Access media quickly with a great variety whether we can travel easily and quickly None of those things are really that Important when it comes to our happiness Could that really be true? I don't know is that fair to say? I mean, of course, they have great value They they meet they can mean a lot But why is it? Why are we not happier despite everything that we have Love to hear why