Happiness and its absence don't show up randomly. They arrive through three specific aspects of living, and naming them makes it far easier to locate exactly where a particular unhappiness is actually coming from.
There is the material aspect, covering bodily sensations, physical things, and the relationship with nature, since everything material ultimately comes from it. There is the behavioural aspect, covering relationships with people, in family and in wider society. And there is the intellectual aspect, the inner world, the self, thoughts, choices, the private conversation running constantly underneath everything visible.
Conflict shows up differently in each. In the material aspect, it looks like cravings that never quite settle, low grade sickness, a persistent dissatisfaction with what's already owned. In the behavioural aspect, it looks like arguments, competition, a quarrel that colours an entire day, and at a larger scale, crime and war. In the intellectual aspect, it looks like anger and stress that seem to arrive from nowhere, goals that keep shifting underfoot, fears that don't resolve, questions about existence that never quite get answered.
Most people, when something feels wrong, reach for whichever fix is most familiar rather than the one the actual conflict lives in. A person unhappy in the intellectual aspect, unsettled thoughts, an unclear sense of purpose, will often try to fix it materially, buying something, changing something external, when the conflict was never located there to begin with.
The next time something feels off, it's worth pausing to actually locate which of the three aspects the discomfort belongs to before reaching for a solution. A material problem needs a material answer. A behavioural one needs actual repair in a relationship. An intellectual one needs understanding, not distraction. Applying the wrong fix to the wrong aspect is a big part of why so much effort at feeling better produces so little lasting change.