Back from Kuala Lumpur after two hours of flight delay. "One of those nights when the luggages are misplaced," the pilot announced guilelessly through the inflight PA.
Met up with Adelaine on Monday in Sunway. "If you're given the choice between two jobs," she said, "with one paying you well but not as well as your neighbour's and the other paying you half as much but better than what your neighbour is making - which job would you take?"
She said she'd rather take the job that pays her less knowing that the neighbours are earning much less.
So would Eugene (colleague #1).
So would Ian (colleague #2).
So would the majority making up "survey shows that..."
Maybe it's just you. But the urge to compare with the Joneses being the basis of so many choices is simply too insatiable an appetite to gratify. Where is the satisfaction in balancing happiness on a scale when it can easily be enjoyed even when the weight is tipped to the other side of the fence?
2 comments:
happiness is relative TS, the cylope is king among the blind... satisfaction is also relative... heheheh...
I agree that where there is a happy man, somewhere else there is another who is happier. But I do not believe a person can be happy, or at least satisfied, knowing that another person isn't doing any better. Such is not happiness but pride, veiled beneath the pursuit of welfare. Cyclops might celebrate his kingship for a while but his despair comes when it dawns on him that he is not a great king because he cannot relate to blindness. A king who is satisfied to have one eye while everyone else has none is not even a great man.
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