What is the difference between the things adults care about, and the things children care about?

 The some of the main differences to me seems to be that the things the adults want are more solid and yet more fleeting. They are more permanent but the happiness you gain from them seams to pass much more quickly, and less pure. (If you are careful with it) money or power will last a longer time then a sunset, or a rose. But after you, for example get promoted by ratting out your best friend, or making up rumors about them, you might feel a sense of accomplishment from that for a bit. More power for you without them in the way! But you will probably feel as your happiness was being tainted by something. Even working hard and finally crawling your way up the corporate latter honestly may not feel genuine. So I got a 5% pay bump. Now I can get internet access on my phone service, so what? The moments are less of something you can look back on when you are older. The adult moments also seem to me to be more quantifiable. You can tell how much power you have over people by how much you can make them do. You can tell how much money you have by counting it. You can’t quantify how happy a sunset or flower makes you. Both lists show things that someone thinks will lead to happiness. But why do adults think escape, or work, or reputation will lead there? I think it must be taught to people, they learn different things to make you happy as you grow up. Someone somewhere said to them “what are you doing? You can’t be happy without power.” And they since they were convinced by whomever it was that without power they wouldn’t be happy, they worked as hard as they could trying to gain power. Another thing all the things on the adults list is that they lead deeper and deeper into themselves. The more you drink, the sadder you are that you have been drinking, the more you drink to hide those feelings. You can always have more power. You can always have more money. You can always have more respect. You can have more fun, and you can be happier, but once you are truly happy you really stop thinking about other things like that. If you are having fun with your friends on a water slide, and you are laughing and playing and having a crazy fun time you aren’t going to be thinking “oh I wish I had a bigger water slide, oh I wish I had more friends, I wish we were having more fun”. You will be enjoying yourself. If you are standing in your office on the top floor in the nicest one you might feel happy. You probably will feel self-satisfaction with yourself. But in the back of your mind you will be thinking, I like this feeling, how can I get more of it? Always searching for more power. How you can make the next building and the building after that yours.  Basically what I’m trying to say from all this is that since the happiness you get from the adult list is less genuine, you are likely to feel less genuinely happy. Losing your innocence and purity for the things you think matter right now, might not matter in the long run.