on short-term happiness
“Dek, bahagia itu kamu yang tentukan.” Dek, happiness is for you to determine. Said my mom on a phone call when I was in the brim of ugly crying, on an empty room after a full day.
Cliché, I know. But hear me out.
“Kenapa ya, rasanya aku gak bisa hepi hepi aja lebih dari dua harii aja,” Why is it that, it feels like I can’t just be happy for juust a bit more than two days. I said moments before, feeling the tears about to flow into my pair of darkening eyebags.
Often, in my head I mention God, or people around me, or things I need to get done, and ask Him or them, what’s so hard in letting me be this happy for a little longer?
If I were to wrote a journal page on my feeling of happiness, I’d say, I haven’t felt a genuine, long time happiness in so long. I’ve got short-term happiness here and there. As people grow old, their lives got more complicated, and so does their way of thinking and feeling. It is easier to complicate things when you have the different variables of life to blame. You’re unlike a baby who can get over the moon over a new toy. Or an elementary school student who stays happy for hours after soaking under the rain, despite catching a cold. You are not a simple-minded kid anymore.
Being concious of a million things going on around you for which you have no power whatsoever on its decision making although they can totally affect your own situation, is, well, in a lot of ways overwhelming. But the complications in life should remind you of how easy life was when you were a simple-minded kid. Because if we could care less, get annoyed less, and just do whatever we want more, we could be mature oversized kids. And what better compliments are there than being told that you are a mature kid when you were little?
As we all know well already (and some of us may puke on the thought of), there is nothing we can do about the millions of things happening around us that is not ours to decide. And so as all these variables dance around and make a mess around us, we can also dance around on our own. Make your own happiness. Like the wise and loving woman figure I know said, happiness is something you decide yourself. If the people around you make you happy, that’s amazing for you. But for the people with short term happiness disease like me, maybe it’s about time we change our requirement of happiness. Not on the dancing variables, but maybe on how much we could dance around? Or how little it takes to come back to your peace? And sometimes, there is no condition at all, just like a child on a normal day, they jump around just because.
Afterall, maybe what we need is to be more selfish. You think that your parents are to blame for your personality, or the tired and cold cashier is to blame for your mood change, and those are selfish. But being selfish also mean caring about only yourself, looking at yourself all the time. And so look more closely, the blame is on you to blame and rely on unreliable things. So be more selfish, and do what it takes to make it easier for you to find a reason for happiness. Because, I repeat, sometimes there should be no reason at all.
Don’t forget to smile a little more.
X, fatiha ;)
