I stumbled across the Are you happy? series yesterday and have since been quite taken with the column. Why oh why doesn’t any Singapore paper come up with such brilliant ideas for columns? Instead, Singaporeans are tortured into reading crappy columns written by wannabe sports presenter Jamie Yeo and wannabe pop star Maia Lee (from the first Singapore Idol) which always seem to delve on ex-boyfriends and the like. I read two articles written by each one of them, and swore never to read another.
So anyway, high quality journalism is one of the reasons why I read papers like The Guardian and the New York Times even though I don’t live in the UK or US. You see, even when they write about fluff, it’s good fluff they write. If I could but write a fraction as well as some of their journalists do, I’d be over the moon. Anyway, I’d like to pretend that I’m going to be published in The Guardian and take my own stab at answering the eternal question – ‘Are you happy?’
Jxxx xx, undecided being
As much as I’d like to say I am, by all accounts, happy, a stronger part of me wants to say otherwise. Perhaps it stems from the fact that I’m not finding meaning in what I do for a living. Yet, dropping everything to pursue something else is impossible. For me, there seems to be this eternal conflict or dilemma, which ever way you want to call it, between what I like and what actually pays a somewhat decent wage. I am afflicted by the constant inverse relationship of the two. I still can’t quite figure out what path ahead I should trod.
However, happiness is also about moments in time. I feel happy when I’m paddling out at sea in an outrigger canoe. It’s blissful when it’s just me, the water and the sun, away from the city bustle.
I feel happy when I’m enjoying good food and conversation with a bunch of good friends or my family over a casual meal that does not reek of pretension and pomposity.
Happiness is also when I stumble upon a good book in the library whose pages are so new it still smells freshly minted. Happiness is when I read a piece of good writing.
Happiness is when you’re in love; when you know that there is someone interested to hear about you talk about your day even if it sounds mundane and lame to the rest of the world. It’s a feeling that went as quickly as it came a long while ago and I struggle to remember it.
But until I really find myself, I’m afraid I’ll always remain ambivalent about my state of happiness.