Buying Happiness With Experience or Things

We derive more happiness from buying experiences than from buying things.  There’s research out by Cornell researchers, Carter and Gilovich to highlight this.  So if we’re interested in learning how to increase our well-being and live life well, here’s a pretty big idea to incorporate into our lives.

Experiences vs. things:  The rationale goes that with new things we quickly adapt.  We get an initial high and then we go back to our baseline of well-being.  With experiences we re-experience them over and over and bring up those great memories and feelings.  They become an integral part of the fabric our life.

This so resonates for me with what I call my bathroom story.  I love traveling and save up my money for wonderful trips, sometimes seen as exotic and off the beaten path by others but to me is simply trying to see the world and all it’s natural beauty and diversity.

My husband and I have been taking  yearly big trips in the summer for the past 12 years or so.  Whenever I’d announce to my mother our trip plans it was always countered with, “why not spend all that money on a bathroom in your basement; you need one down there for when people sleep there.”  I would frustratingly but nicely (if there’s such a thing; I think it’s an oxymoron though) try to say how I understand that’s her priority but it’s not mine.   And her answer would be, “A bathroom you’ll have ‘forever’ and something to show for your money but a trip will come and go in a couple of weeks.”

Now I do get that perspective.  And I also subscribe to mine.

I sit in my den which is adorned wall-to-wall with blow-ups of our travels and I revel in all the memories of my trips.  I never tire of looking at these photos and re-experiencing aspects of these amazing vacations.  I feel the awesomeness of the Swiss Alps; the joy in being in Monet’s Japanese garden with all it’s vibrant greens and  frog-filled lily pond;  the breeze as I imagine opening our doors in our room to overlook a most gorgeous view in Santorini; that jeep ride coming upon two lions and two rhinoes squaring off to each other on our safari outing that cold early morning as we sat on hot water bottles to warm our bottoms;  the simultaneous terror and high of ziplining in Costa Rica;  my initial embarrassment  walking out of a bathroom in the Rome airport having changed into our clown garb for our exciting Patch Adams service trip to Sicily and being swarmed by kids chattering away in Italian and all we did was laugh.

This says it all.  This brings meaning.  This brings me joy.  This says to me I’m living and bringing into my life what’s important and pleasurable to me.  This is a big part of the rich tapesty of colors of my life.

I never did do a basement bathroom but I did redo my first floor bathroom, in purple.  Another joy in my life.  Yes, purple does bring me joy, as do colors in general.  So I can sit in my den surrounded by my gorgeous pictures which evoke priceless life-time memories and see into the deep purple of my bathroom and get pleasure from that too.  But one  or the other, I’ll take experience over thing anytime.

A broadway musical for my birthday won out last week over a piece of clothing or another ‘thing.’  The show uplifted me and I re-feel the high energy of the Jersey Boys music.

Your turn – what gives you longer-lasting pleasure and meaning – Experience or Thing; buying an experience or buying that new thing?