What should life be like? What can we reasonably expect from our existence? I’m not referring to those ultra people, with extreme lifestyles, who live as monastic monks or who have blue blood and live in palaces. I’m also not referring to affluent celebrities, or even the influencers who fabricate a social media persona to make themselves seem ‘more than’. I just mean the everyday Joe Bloggs like you and me who need to work to pay the bills and who bumble along through life, seemingly without direction or purpose. The ones who, like us, get to the end of days and wonder where all the time went. What can we expect our lives to be like? Because we need to know. We need to know in order to be able to evaluate if we’re leading a good life or a bad one, which in turn helps us be happy or sad.

Well, it depends on where you come from, I suppose. By and large, people in the West lead more affluent lives than those who come from developing nations, certainly those who live in absolute poverty. Our basic needs: food, shelter, drinking water, personal safety, and the freedom to act, are the basic foundations of life. If you have those, you’re doing ok. In fact, you’re doing better than the bottom 10% of the world’s population.

But hey, I’ve lived in relative poverty for years. Despite having my basic needs met through welfare payments, it’s still no picnic. In fact, it’s damned difficult and soul-destroying to have to monitor every single penny you spend. It is hard to be happy living this way, because the fact is that, for whatever reason, we’ve come to expect more out of life. We don’t just want to exist and have our basic needs met; a good life involves more than that. A good life involves doing interesting things, and this costs money. And this is where it gets complicated, because our whole economy depends on us spending more and more on these additional things. Companies are vying for our attention, trying to lure us into spending what little disposable income we have on their products. To do that, they persuade us our lives will be better with them, and so consequently we feel inferior without them. 

To get enough lucre to be able to afford these luxury products and sustain our basic needs requires us to spend most of our lives working, because most of us don’t have high-paid jobs. We have menial jobs with average salaries, which means our disposable income is low, and when kids or responsibilities come along, it’s even lower. Some researchers have calculated the exact income you need to earn to be happy, and it is around £70,000 per year. They say happiness is like a bell curve that peaks at this level, then drops off. Paradoxically, people become less happy the more they earn! None of this helps those of us on basic incomes, of course, especially those who have to pay high rents and steep bills, and who earn a lot less than £70,000 a year. 

This is what most of us can expect life to be like. Working to pay bills to keep a roof over our heads and sustain our basic needs, while hoping there’s enough left over to spend on these additional luxuries that all the advertisers want us to buy. We work, we sleep, we rest and play. This is what life is. If this sounds bleak, it really isn’t. We live in the most privileged society that’s ever lived. Technological and medical advances, economic developments, social cohesion and relative global peace mean our lives are much better than our parents and grandparents’ lives were. Even in my lifetime, life has progressed at an astonishing rate. Our forefathers fought in world wars, they went down the mines and broke their backs in the shipyards. They rarely went on holidays and a pint of beer in the pub was a well-earned luxury. If they got sick, they had to pay for a doctor, infant mortality was high and life expectancy was low. Go back even fifty years, and life was much harder than it is now. According to all the research indicators, happiness is increasing, and although the UK and the US don’t fare too well, we still do okay. 

So yeah, life might be taken up with working to pay the bills and there may not be much left over for the finer things, but we still have it pretty good in the 21st century. Looking at the glamorous, celebrity lifestyles in the media often makes us feel less than, that somehow our lives are inferior to theirs, but this isn’t true. Fame, success and financial prosperity may seem like the Holy Grail of happiness, but they are empty, hollow vessels with little to offer. 

What matters most is the family we have, the friendships we forge and the moments we savour with the people we love. These things are beyond money. They are things that don’t come with a price tag and yet they are the most precious things in life. But here’s the thing. We have to cultivate them. If we don’t tend to our personal relationships, if we don’t invest time, effort, love and commitment in them, they fade and die. We cannot expect these things to happen automatically or take them for granted. They don’t come hardwired, or built-in to the fabric of life, and yet our personal relationships dictate the quality of our lives. 

If yours is full of meaningful, joyous family and friendships, if you’re part of a strong community or you have a loving, faithful partner, and are making cherished memories, you are successful beyond your wildest dreams. Your life is already so much richer for it. This isn’t luck. It’s because you put the time and effort in to make it that way. Having people that like you, that love you, this is what your life should be like. 

Sources

Global poverty 2025 from the World Bank

The exact income needed to be truly happy

Top 25 happiest countries