From the author: What does it mean to be happy and live life to the fullest? Today many people are looking for the answer to this question. However, achieving your goals, having a pleasant time and having a successful personal life do not guarantee internal harmony, a feeling of completeness and meaningfulness in life. Depression, a feeling of inner emptiness, dissatisfaction, constant internal tension are often companions of a successful social life. This article is devoted to how we lose and find the taste of life. Tastes could not be discussed. And it’s true: every person has their own ways to make life fulfilling and meaningful. But what does it mean to taste life? Feel alive? Achieve your goals? To have fun? “Man is created for happiness like a bird for flight” - at one time this phrase by V.G. Korolenko shocked me with her deep simplicity and truth. Why then are there so few happy people around? There are many successful people, but there are no happy ones. Perhaps the whole point is that it is important for a person in his quest for happiness to find the necessary guidelines. But as soon as a child is born, he is told from all sides (sometimes very persistently) where he should go. From the height of their life experience, understanding of achievements and mistakes, caring people wholeheartedly give instructions on where to look for happiness. Sometimes these tips fall on the fertile soil of the child’s abilities and personal characteristics. Then he has reliable guidelines and support in life, which is then transformed into self-confidence, which helps him find his way in life. Sometimes the tips of loved ones, their ways of perceiving the world, diverge from the child’s individual characteristics and inclinations. Then a conflict arises in which the child finds himself prematurely in a situation of choice. However, due to his age, he cannot make any choice, so his psyche creates one or another way of existing in this conflict, adapting to the current situation. In the future, both the conflict itself and the ways of adapting to it become part of a person’s character. We all have conflicts that remain unresolved, and to which we have adapted with the help of certain psychological defenses. The actualization of such a conflict in life can occur when faced with a similar situation (for example, someone around us behaved in the same way as close people in our childhood) or a series of events that trigger a similar emotional reaction (which is why during stress, when psychological protection of a person, internal conflicts may come to the surface). But, most importantly, when that part of his psyche where there is an internal conflict comes into contact with the surrounding reality, a person does not experience pleasure from life, even if he is successful. Having achieved the desired goal, he suddenly loses interest in it, the long-awaited trip causes anxiety instead of joy, and love and friendship are overshadowed by jealousy and disappointed expectations. Some people cannot enjoy life at all. Not a single activity gives them real satisfaction, only temporary peace and relaxation. They often rush around in search of their place, changing interests, jobs, partners... Sometimes, in search of bright emotions, they risk themselves, trying to revive their feelings, forget about their safety, resort to alcohol and drugs, and passionately devote themselves to new projects and relationships. Eternal wanderers in life, they can try a lot of things - and still not find a place for themselves. Sometimes a place is found and such a person devotes himself with all passion to an activity or relationship, completely dissolving in them, gradually forgetting who he really is. He may even become successful and many will envy him, but such a person will be betrayed by his fatigue from life: he, like a donor of his success, invests all his strength without receiving full satisfaction. Any activity that alienates a person from himself, his essence , cannot lead to happiness. This is why becoming successful is much easier than becoming happy. To me.