It is counterintuitive to believe that an individual could be equally happy by just winning the lottery or just becoming paralyzed. Becoming paralyzed doesn’t seem to be something one could be happy about. Especially not as happy as a million-dollar lottery winner is. Most people would probably initially choose to be rich over being paralyzed. However, after a few years, if you were to ask who was happier, you’d probably conclude that the paralytic person is just as happy as the millionaire. Dan Gilbert goes on during his Ted Talk to talk about how in the world this paralyzed individual could possibly be just as happy as the rich person. He explains how this is possible by comparing “synthetic happiness” and “true happiness”. Would you prefer fake happiness or real happiness?

Exactly they both give off the same feeling of contentment. When we get what we want when we want it, we feel true happiness. When we don’t get what we want when we want it, we’ll surely find something else to make us content. This is synthetic happiness. Either way, we end up “happy”. Because why would we want to feel defeated or feel like we lost. We don’t like losing, so why don’t we make it so we can’t lose. This is all about perspective. When something doesn’t go our way, meaning we lost, we feel unhappy. No one likes feeling unhappy, so we change the narrative in a way to make it seem like we won. For example, when getting broken up with, most people are unhappy. Once an individual is confronted about being broken up with, their response is usually along the lines of how “they didn’t really want to be with the person who broke up with them anyways”. So yes, the paralytic person is just as happy as the millionaire. It’s all about perspective.