I think trying to be happy is a luxury in this world, which is sad as fuck.
Most days I think are just spent trying not to feel like shit, and that's true of more people in this world than would ever admit to it.
Ironically that's part of the problem. The average person wants to be viewed as happy by others more than they want to actually feel happy on the inside, so they'll never want to admit they aren't, and therefore we never end up building anything in this world to be genuinely happy about. Everyone just says they're happy and then wastes their life away doing fuck all but reproducing and slaving away at a "job".

There really isn't anything that can make me consistently happy. Some things have higher success rates though, like music maybe. But happiness really just seems to be a random burst of happiness that has no actual cause.
Almost like your brain is just sick of everything being so dull or outright horrible all the time that it decides to be happy for no reason to balance itself out or something.

>>2
Happiness is only a luxury for the more contemplative types, eg the people who use imageboards. If you think too much about life you'll start seeing how vast and chaotic the world is and start feeling overwhelmed. If thinking about something brings you nothing but misery and you have no practical reason to think about it, simply put it out of your mind

>>3
It goes beyond that stuff. It's not that there are problems, it's that there are obvious things in everyone's life that make them miserable and they don't acknowledge it.
Take the workforce for example. Does anyone actually believe that a 40hr workweek was some magic number that some geniuses in a think tank came up with to create the perfect balance of life, progress, and work? Does anyone actually believe that number just so happens to optimize practically every single job out there?
No. It really might as well have been a number chosen at random. Our society stabilized itself around that number, but it could have easily been 30, or 20.
In fact, I would even argue that some lower numbers would create more progress. Especially scientific and cultural progress.

Another way to put it is, we are still living in a survival-based system. The game of life is literally just a survival game. Despite all our technology and advances we're really not that far removed from our hunter-gatherer ancestors (and believe it or fucking not they actually worked LESS than the average person today does). You stop working you die.
The dreams of the average human being go no further than survival-based dreams and instincts. It's just boring, tedious, and sad.
Almost nothing in this world is even actually built to make you happy. That's only the secondary motive, with the primary motive being money, which is just more survival shit. That includes movies, shows, and even music to some extent.

I think I have some distant dream of owning a nice vineyard with beautiful children and a good life, but I also think it is a lie I tell myself everyday so that I get out of bed and assume the guise of a productive member of society. I suppose maybe that is what adulthood is, but at 23 I am saddened by the fact that I already feel like I'm spinning my tires on my way to the grave.

With that said, I think personal contentment was never something that made me happy. What I feel makes me feel genuinely happy is seeing others and our species succeed; even if I might never set foot on Mars I would be overjoyed for us to do so. When someone creates a work of art I don't think I ever feel happiness driven by a personal relationship to the subject at hand, but I am gladdened to see that someone else was able to create something like that. It is kind of weird. I don't lament my failings, I just wish others the best.