What it took me to be happy

Prasasti Soebekti
4 min readJun 12, 2024

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Credit to Pinterest

I’ve spending lot all of my teenage year to figured it out what does really make me happy. But here I am in my early 20s still haven’t know what defined happiness is. In my broad view happiness is a state when you feel like your life is good and you have no serious problem to solve or to think about — maybe happiness is when you just don’t feel sad even though you have so much problem. I don’t really know.

Maybe I am just too young to understand.

Yet it feels so hard for me to get closer to that “happiness” I thought when I can define or describe it would make me get closer to it but unfortunately no. I often wondering when, how and what are somethings that going to make me happy? what does it going to takes, what something I’m going to sacrifice to exchange it with happiness?

Then, here I am haven’t sleep when its 4 am in my room questioning myself what it took me to be happy and then suddenly there’s plenty of words popping in my head as if it's a crashing program in my laptop. Word by word I tried to arrange it. And I feel like I want to write it down and maybe publish it but not to think someone going to read it and get impressed by it. I want to write it because maybe it will heal me, maybe my future self will need it, maybe my future self going to laugh when she read this again — so, what it really took me to be happy?

Maybe I will exchange my happiness with the fact that I have search it in my entire teenage year, or maybe I’ll finally found happiness because it feels unfair if I didn’t while I have already lost my dad too. Maybe I’ll find happiness because the world will pity me if they find out about how much I spend my time crying alone in my room just because I have a flashback or just because I miss my Mama, or maybe happiness will find me because I have already suffered enough from traumatic event as a child, or maybe happiness would find me when it figured out how lonely I am.

Or maybe, not all of the above.

Maybe happiness would come on a random Sunday morning when its raining and I still have a pack of Indomie ayam bawang. Maybe happiness is about finishing a good book called “Pulang” by Leila S. Chudori. Maybe happiness is about got a chance to watch romantic movie that makes me feel cringe but got me giggling and kicking my feet. Maybe happiness is when I got a cute gift and a note from my college best friend in my birthday. Maybe happiness is when my friend reply to my story and scolded me lovingly remind me not to be sad. Maybe happiness is when my friend suddenly sent a “luv ya” text to make sure I know that she’s always going to be by my side when I just broke up. Maybe happiness is when my little brother randomly treats me for an Ice cream. Maybe happiness will come when I took a walk at Wisdom Park and lying by the grass, maybe happiness is just about when I got unexpected discount info pop up on my timeline, maybe happiness is about I able to watch a cute cat videos on my smartphone.

Or maybe happiness is just as simple as being in love and grateful with being alive.

Doesn’t matter if happiness won’t come, I’ll surely find it. More importantly, I’ll create my own version of happiness and I’m going to carry it everywhere. I’m going to run with it through every tough faith I came across. I hope I’ll always spread happiness even when I feel sad, even when I got my heart broken.

I want to take happiness as my middle name.

Happiness sometime going to trade itself to an expensive and big thing to teach me how to love all the small details and make it my own version of happiness. I tried to appreciate anything being thrown at me and make it useful in my life.

“When life gives you lemon, make a lemonade.”

This writing is actually the first thing I wrote before all of my other articles. And this writing is the one that motivate me to start writing my thought and share it just because.

Thank you for spending your time reading my mind

I wish you good :)

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