WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

I suddenly had the guts again to write about happiness and personal satisfaction. I don’t know what pushed me to write once more about this very heated topic in my head but one thing is sure, something’s been bothering me for the past weeks, and I just feel that it won’t stop unless I do something about it.

So what has been bothering me? I’ll be honest, it’s the thought of happiness based on my career and of my future. Mom’s been telling me to study hard so I won’t grow up poor. Everyone’s pushing me to be disciplined and organized and persevering so I’ll have a good life in the future. My brother, especially, is so strict on following his prescribed ideals that he forgets what it truly means to follow his own made path. Does it really matter if we’re successful or not? Does it really matter if we made the right or the best choices in life? Somehow, and I mean, yes, it does matter if the choices you make will lead you towards success and a good life. But what I’m saying here is, if a good life brings you happiness. Most of the time it will but if the good life you’re asking for is focused on materialistic ambitions and dreams, well I’m not sure about that.

Now, my point here is that everyone wants to please everyone. My mom wants to please me, my siblings, my father, and her patients. She does things so we’ll have a good life and she struggles so much, she sacrifices so much, thinking that everything she does is for our good. But one thing that bothers me so much is the fact that she does these things not because she’s really happy about it. I don’t know, probably her happiness is based on ours but a long time ago, let’s say, when she was at my age, has she ever thought of what would really make her happy? Like let’s say, happy in a way like “this is what I want to do twenty years from now, let’s say, I still don’t have kids at that time.” Does she really consider the meaning of studying hard or she just wants us to study hard to aim for material things in the future? It’s just sometimes, I feel like she wants me to pursue for material things not for true happiness.

Maybe I’m just very sentimental in a way that I’m the odd one out in this family. Probably they all have their idealistic goals and visions about a bright future and I’m just here, contemplating on true happiness. Probably it’s just because I see life on a very different light that our thoughts are clashing but me, not having the guts to oppose them, just do things that I think will cause no trouble – follow and do what they think for me is right. Probably it’s just that they have been so much on the road and I’m just always stuck here in my room that makes them think I’m so inexperienced, which I really am, but nonetheless still I think more deeply than anyone of them.

So, I’m just writing this essay or whatever this is right now, because I feel empty once more and I needed inspiration or somehow, I needed to let go of this burden. I just think that my mom’s been pushing me so much towards the wrong goals in life. I don’t know. It feels so right yet so wrong. In the end, I know it’s all my fault for I never fought for what I think is right. But how can you judge me when I don’t know exactly what I want. But then again, how would I know what I want without exploring the world? I know, they all say it’s all the same, they’re so experienced that they don’t want me to experience it anymore. They’re so well knowledgeable of things they’re trying to deprive me of bad

knowledge and only inculcate a single thought in my head about their well-so-furnished-and-planned-ideal about happiness and success.