Happiness, it's what you don't have - that's the oldest hustle in the world.
I was just cursing a pile of sticks that were too damp to light and I was being deprived of the bonfire I had assembled and was preparing to light, and I was laughing because in the words of Buckaroo Banzai, "wherever you go, there you are." I've achieved a kind of temporary exit for as long as my means permit, and I can say that the real that the rat race conceals is not for everyone.
My trip up the hedonic treadmill was such that I even wrote professionally about the sort of things one might buy in the hopes of finding a there there, pitching stories about exotic experiences one could have for the price of a vacation. There isn't a there there. There is no yacht long enough, club exclusive enough, view stunning enough, or achievement great enough that it makes you any different from the person standing on the subway platform. You will be the same person. I guarantee that if you flame out of your job, cash in your savings and manage to summit Everest, the first thing you will do when you get to the top is check your phone. The things that seemed so important were only symbolic. Pursuit of symbols specificially disqualifies us from attaining the meaning they represent. Maybe the humility is worth it, as yeah, the things I achieved were symbols that don't mean the same things now that I have them, but that's the treadmill, the pursuit of symbols and representations - affect.
I can say with some confidence that you only actually have what is yours to share, not all of it is good, and meaning only exists in the moment of sharing it. I can also say that unhappy people are not lonely, as their misery and self involvement keeps them from noticing it. I think to really understand what it means to be lonely, you need to find some happiness first, then when you move to share it with someone who isn't there, that's the feeling. That absence of no one in particular, but with the sense of having lost someone close. It is truly a rarefied experience I am glad to have been able to appreciate, but it's not a solution to anything. If you want to exit the rat race, try camping first, maybe a longish canoe trip, or read some good literary fiction. Ultimately, it's just you.
This is all to say, we invent the conditions we impose on our choosing happiness. They are symbolic and representations, they are not the real, and the real is not far or exotic. It's perhaps easier to believe we are unfufilled by our successes, and that there is another life out there if we just leave all this behind, as it puts off recognizing that we're probably just idiots in profoundly difficult ways.