musings on happiness

God is the greatest impressionist painter eh?

i was thinking about my life in general whilst taking the mrt down to clarke quay for drinks/food with the guys @ brewerkz (which imo is ridiculously overpriced, when i realised that a simple plate of ribs cost $58 freaking dollars and a plate of nachos cost $38. like i can’t even fathom how they have the decency to charge such steep prices for really humble and non-nuanced food).

anyways, the rant aside, this thinking of my life was prompted as I was reading gretchen rubin’s the happiness project where she mentioned her wierd resolution of reading memoirs of people’s catastrophes to kinda get a sense of one’s own fortune in life in a semi-sick schadenfreude (i love this word) sense. and well, it got me thinking of how, really making upward comparisons with seemingly more fortunate people in your life can really be such a downer, sucking all the joy from your life. i mean, face it, there’s always gonna be better off people in every single realm of life surrounding you. you can either be confident in one’s achievements or wallow in the neverending envy/jealousy cycle and scramble to catch up.

and in a real sense, i was pretty much a person of the latter mentality for alot of the times. when i was bumming around last june/july before starting work, i actually grew envious of people in their smart work clothes heading back home at 8pm++, seemingly so grown up and so planned in their lives. and even when i started work, i always compared, always tried to secure a job scope that looked like i was doing tons of stuff, making alot of headway and the likes. and yet i also craved this party lifestyle, having tons of contacts, networks, gaining access to private clubs and the likes. its like i was never satisfied, even with whatever i had. simply put, there will always be a way the frame our lives such that we truly look like suckers — it’s whether we realise it and whether we actively stop ourselves from doing it.

so yeah.. projekt happiness resolution 1 (note to self that i’m seriously bad at keeping resolutions) is really just to enjoy being myself. enjoy being frank. enjoy the times when i look in the mirror and obviously do not have six pacs =). enjoy all my times spent at my work and not at it, enjoy my time with my parents and my cute niece, and so on. and i dont think this necessarily translates into a lackadaisical lifestyle, in a sense that u dont get motivated to improve. but its just, being satisfied and yet not totally being so. hmm hard to explain. but i’ll try to figure it out. =)

ok time to sleep. =)