A life of always-more is a life that has confused size with order. The older tradition said happiness is the activity of the soul in accord with virtue — fulfillment, not accumulation. The modern reflex makes it a quantity, and then is surprised that the quantities never satisfy.
Notice the grammar that betrays the confusion. "I am pursuing happiness." The verb makes happiness a quarry — something out ahead, separate from the pursuer, capturable in principle. But happiness in the older sense was never a quarry. It was a way of being well — a state of having one's activity rightly ordered. You do not pursue it any more than a healthy body pursues its health.
You do not pursue happiness any more than a healthy body pursues its health.
Why the quantities never finish
The accumulator hits a wall the contemplative does not: each acquisition recalibrates the baseline. The sixth car is dimmer than the first, the second house emptier than the rented apartment that preceded it. The diminishing returns are not a fault in the goods; they are evidence that the goods were never the cause of the satisfaction. The satisfaction was caused by ordered activity — and the activity, not the inventory, is what is finally fulfilled.
Ecclesiastes saw this with terrifying clarity. "I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings... and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The vanity is not in the silver. The vanity is in the gathering, when the gathering replaces the living.
Fulfillment is what an excellent life looks like from inside. Accumulation is what a fearful one looks like from outside. The difference is not a question of how much; it is a question of whether the activity is rightly ordered. Test this on a single afternoon: ask whether what you did was, in itself, a good way to be a person. If yes, the day was happy regardless of what was added. If no, no addition will save it.