In where I live, it may be in yours too,
they like to tell you how to live.
You should this…
You should that…
You can’t this…
You can that…
(Well this last saying doesn’t appear too often, they don’t like you to think you can do much. They prefer you just stick to what they want you to do.)
You see it’s rather fear driven. Advise or sayings that are not based on real facts but on fear. You should earn this amount, you can’t tell your boss “no”, you should buy a 4-room flat because the resale is better, you should get a job so you can have CPF (compulsory savings with the government), you should have a baby now, you should send your child to this school and the list goes on.
They say the country is expensive to live in. It may be true. But only because we want the expensive. We want to drive, we want live in big houses, we want to eat restaurant food, we want to do up the baby room, we want lavish weddings, we want our five star resort or photogenic airbnb holidays, we want our iphone, we want to do online shopping and we want to visit the high end hair salons.
But we could really do without that.
Or rather I could do without that.
Should I get a high paying salary where I spend most of my time working, for money that I don’t really need, to buy and do things that give me a little bit of happiness for a while but are not truly the things that make me happy? I could do with less money, so that I can have less time at work and more time writing and cooking and taking care of my health and sleeping and having lunch with my mom and dad.
It is in these moments, that I find myself most happy.
When I have to earn a certain amount and thus have to work too much, I find that an unhappiness grows and all these material things that you purchase and all these costly experiences you crave after, just chips away at the unhappiness but it doesn’t give you enough joy to wash away that negative scale and make it a positive one. Can one really live life like that and feel that at death’s door, it was worth it?
I can’t.
And I won’t.
Though they utter disapproving comments, they don’t really know.
They don’t know to ask, so they don’t know that you are so happy right now, more happy than a higher pay cheque can ever give. They ask me how many gigs I have coming up, but that’s not the important question. They never ask if I’m happy. Cause I’ll tell you that I am. In fact, they seem foolish when they ask you to chase for more money. What’s worse is that these people who disapprove, strangely live lives of unhappiness and why in the world of worlds would I take advise from someone whose life I don’t want?
Funny,
That those who relish telling you how to live,
Don’t know how to live themselves.
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