Money, Family, AI -What's Actually Stealing Our Happiness?

What's your honest thought on happiness, given how different everyone's life actually is?

Some people have more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes. Some people don't have enough to eat today. Some kids grow up with parents who genuinely love each other and build a calm home. Some kids grow up listening to their parents fight every single day, absorbing all of that tension without ever asking for it. And somewhere in between, most of us are just going through the motions, trying to figure out what we're even chasing anymore.

Here's what's been sitting with me lately.

As kids, we all had this idea: when I grow up, I'll buy this, I'll do that, I'll finally feel like I've made it. There was so much excitement attached to the future.

Then you actually get there, whatever "there" was for you, a job, a certain amount of money, a certain lifestyle, and the excitement is just... gone. You got the thing, and you feel strangely normal. Maybe even a little empty. Like the finish line moved the second you crossed it.

It's like we're slowly becoming more like machines, going through routines, chasing the next milestone out of habit rather than genuine desire, not really feeling much either way.

And I can't help but think AI is making this worse, not better. It's optimizing everything, our feeds, our recommendations, even how we spend our free time, but optimization isn't the same as meaning. We're more efficient, more connected, more informed than any generation before us, and somehow a lot of people feel more disconnected from any real sense of purpose or joy.

So I'm curious what people actually think:

Is this just what adulthood is, and we romanticize childhood excitement more than it deserves?

Is it inequality itself, seeing some people struggle to survive while others have more than they need, that quietly numbs everyone's sense of what "enough" even means?

Is it the home we grew up in, whether it was calm and loving or full of tension we never chose to be part of, quietly shaping how much we're even capable of feeling happy as adults?

Or is it something newer, like constant optimization and technology, that's actually changing how capable we are of feeling excited or content in the first place?

Not looking for a neat answer. Just curious what this community actually thinks, because I don't think I've figured it out myself.