It's almost been a year since my last post. Lots of things happened in-between, some good, some bad and most insignificant. Most of the people I know, me included, are not quite where they wished they would be. There seems to be a lot of unhappiness going around. So I decided to make that my topic.
I believe a lot of people have a misconception of what happiness is. Happiness is always portrayed as something hidden, a treasure to be found. Something that, when found, would stay with you until the day you die. So they spend half their lives, or more, trying to find eternal happiness. I have discarded this notion.
I see happiness as transient, a brief period of joy that passes with the moment or with the setting of the sun. Like frost on a cold winter morning, it will eventually fade.
How then can people claim to be happy? A happy life depends on the amount of happy moments present in one’s life. A lot of people claim that happiness is found in oneself. In a sense this is true. No-one can identify a happy moment for you, or surround you with people that elicit joy. You have to do that yourself.
I believe that many people are so busy searching for ‘eternal’ happiness that these moments pass them by. Sometimes small, seemingly important things can make you unhappy in a moment that should have been filled with joy. From experience, I know that it is not always easy to prevent these things from making you unhappy, but then, I view unhappiness as transient too.
Human beings like to cling to things that make them unhappy. I would compare it to an addiction. Unhappiness gets attention, it gives convenient excuses. I tend to be very fond of melodramatic, melancholy events in my life. Most of the time it allows me to write poetry, and writing poetry makes me happy. So to give up on unhappiness, I would most likely have to give up on my poetry as well. Not an idea I relish.
But I have learned to enjoy life a lot more than I used to, simply by enjoying the moments. The exchange of n secret smile, the wind on my face, a meaningful conversation, friends, a guy on a bicycle with a live chicken under his arm. These are the things that make life interesting and as long as life is interesting, I am happy...kind of :)
I appologise for the short, incomplete post. There is lots more to say on this topic, and perhaps I will adress it in a future post. For now this is what my tired, uninspired mind came up with.
