#17 The Pursuit of Happiness

You may think that the words above are just like movie title which is starred by Will Smith and his son, Jaden Smith. Will you think that I am going to make a movie review? Nope, I am going to write some random things about why lots of us seem to pursue happiness. But the problem is what kind of happiness that most of us really want. So what is the true meaning of happiness for you? Yep, you probably have a definition of it based on your own.

If we are being questioned, "what do we want when we being an old then?" "Living peacefully and happily" at least that is probably we will answer.

Till this time I still don't know what true happiness is like. Sometimes we make it like a premise, happiness is if I can make a lot of money then I will be happy... or I will be happy if I have XYZ... there are so many people do anything to pursue the happiness. Many consider that happiness is if we can make somebody we love happy, or others say happiness is when we can achieve material success.

Realized or not, the more we want to be happy the more we suffer. Everybody has own problems. And the problem is something we scared of; therefore we often avoid and escape from it instead of solving it or looking for a solution. But nobody knows that happiness can come from the problems we solve.

Sometimes the problem is kind of simple, for instance, my problem is I want to have a good carrier and getting paid from my passion but so far I failed three times for joining the companies where I thought I could work with passion. Others may be more complicated or more standard, most of us used to have standard living based on social construction. Unfortunately, we seem to agree or being forced to say 'yes' to it so that we compete with all the way to achieve it just to get acceptance and approval from others although sacrificing our time, energy, money and people we love.

As I observe what happens to young people today is they compete to achieve success. I have no idea who has forced and pushed them to have success. Is it parents, friends, neighbour? What kind of success do they want? It does not mean I do not care about being a successful one but sometimes people turn success into pressure. To be honest, as a young who experiencing a quarter-life, I feel kind of worry about success, what will people think about me if I do not achieve that success. *Arghh, stop giving a s*hit about what people think! Yep, because success means we live comfortable living = happiness.

Okay, I will say that there is nothing wrong to be successful. Everybody has a right to be successful and live happily. But it depends on how the ways to achieve it because just for the sake of success, we often find people do the wrong things that can harm others even themselves. I would rather say 'the pursuit of satisfaction' than the pursuit of happiness for this issue.

As long as you are still alive, problems will never end. Let's say when I have a problem, a financial problem; I try to solve it with getting a side job. It actually means I am trying to create a new problem which is sacrificing lots of time and energy and it may bring up a risk toward my health. As I said earlier sometimes happiness can come from problems we solve means if we want to be happy we should solve our problem, not avoiding it or pretending as if we do not have a problem otherwise we will feel more inconvenient.

Before I end up all of these random and unimportant things, I will recommend some things: firstly, do not try to pursue happiness because it will make us feel getting unhappier, just face the problems with solving it. Secondly, give up for being liked. Next, do not try to compare ourselves to others. Appreciate others as we want to be appreciated and do not forget to always feel thankful for what we have. Remember, the source of happiness is in ourselves.