The Futile Pursuit of Happiness?

When I first read the book "Stumbling on Happiness" (快樂為什麼不幸福?), I had strong feelings that all the ancient philosophers and great thinkers were amazing observers of human nature. They somehow knew that human beings were liable to the mistake of "miswanting". We often predict or expect, mistakenly, what makes us happy or unhappy. Modern psychologists investigate all these phenomena, coining the terms "impact bias", "affective forecasting" etc. But the bad news is that it's difficult to train our emotion to make better decisions, especially those with long-term impact on our lives. The good news though is that we have another psychological immune system to protect us from all the bad decisions or bad/unlucky things which happened to us. As much as we adapt to good things, make them ordinary and lose our pleasure, we also adapt to bad things, make them ordinary and reconcile to our loss. What made Budda a wiser man was probably because he knew it before making his decisions or experiencing life events.

HK people are experts in the art of adaptation when it comes to investment decisions. I've heard too many times that people buy high in the property market or the stock market to get a ride on the bull. When they finally accept the reality of riding on the bear, they also re-construct their own reality of buying the apartment for their own use or buying the equity for long-term holding. They never forget to count their blessings when they finally re-sell the property or the stocks at their buying prices. The good thing is that they have accumulated a pretty handsome "saving" althought it gives no interest, not to mention the costs of transaction, interests paid etc. Will any lesson be learnt for the future? Maybe. But the wirings of the human brains don't seem to favour the buyers.