The Elusive One

Happiness. Now there’s one mouthful of a concept. Not a word that is often used to describe my state of being right now. My friends and I seem to be wallowing in a lot of self-pity lately. The job sucks, the relationship sucks, the social life sucks — pretty much everything sucks. Some people say it’s the quarter-life crisis. There’s a label and a category for everything nowadays.

So what is happiness and why does it often seem so unattainable? If there was a packet of instant happiness sold at Kemchicks — tear at corner, pour in hot water, stir and drink — I would buy a cartful of it right now.

Everyone knows Friends, the TV show about a group of 20-somethings whose gripes and grumbles are hashed out at their local coffee shop. Well, my friends and I have those conversations all the time, except that since we’re no longer in the ‘90s, we don’t do it at a local hangout over coffee, but on conference chat on our BlackBerries.

Such conversations usually revolve around boys (yes, we still call them boys), relationships, work, more boys and the varying degrees of our current state of misery. If we looked through our saved chats I’m sure we would sound like a tape on perpetual rewind, playing the same sad songs over and over again.

We usually take turns. When one person starts getting sucked into the quicksand of despair, the others rush to the rescue by quickly pointing out all the wonderful things happening in her life. You look good, look at how much you have accomplished in your life, he should be grateful to have you/you don’t need guys to fulfill your life (choose either or depending on current relationship status), etc, etc, etc. Unsurprisingly those comments are largely on the mark. We, as members of the BlackBerry-carrying-overseas-graduate-jetsetting generation, are the lucky ones.

So what is with all the complaining?

So many things masquerade as happiness that it’s sometimes tough to sort out what is real and what is not. In Indonesia so much of who we are is defined by status, what we wear and what family we come from, that our perception often becomes skewed. Often we think that the excitement of being seen in the right places or the thrill of buying a new pair of “it” shoes is the key to happiness. If you look great you to everyone else, you must also feel great.

But really these things only give you a temporary high, instant gratification, unsustainable in the long run. And when I say unsustainable I don’t just mean in the monetary sense.

Human beings are not designed for an existence in such extremes. We have this thing called adaptive preferences. Give us luxurious things all the time and eventually they don’t seem so special anymore. Give us only the basic necessities and eventually we will cope and accept that it is all we need. Our tendency toward adaptive preferences is nature’s built-in survival kit.

It is a mistake to think that happiness is all about the high, the euphoria one feels when a climactic event happens. Happiness is not about the blip on the radar, the spike on the gratification chart. Happiness is the median, the norm, the neutral flat line in the middle of the graph.

Much of the time we live our lives expecting the highs and then we hit rock bottom when we reach a point when nothing exciting happens. Finding the middle ground is not as easy as it seems. Why do you think Siddharta Gautama spent so much time under that tree?

There is a certain truth to the saying that money can’t buy happiness, but it sure helps a lot. Certain material things are necessary for our basic survival. But beyond that there are more important things to be had than branded clothes and fancy cars.

I look at other people and say, if I had what they have I’d be happy. That successful career woman who made director by the time she’s 30, that couple who managed to stay young while being married, that first-time mother doting on her young baby. I’ll take a combo of those with a side of French fries, please!

Much of what happiness is all about is about figuring out what is meaningful in life for you and then achieving that. It is also about the ability to look inward and to reflect and appreciate what you already have. You cannot fix something when you do not know why it is broken, and you cannot make something without realizing what you already have.

Priorities also change as you journey through life. After being abroad so long, I miss being able to walk down the street and spending afternoons walking my dog in the park. No amount of money can replace being able to join friends for coffee on a sunny Sunday afternoon while enjoying the sea breeze.

At the end of the day if you can sit down, reflect and be content with what you have and what you’ve achieved, happiness is in your grasp. I sure hope I’m getting close because my BlackBerry inbox is about to reach maximum capacity.

+ Tessa Wijaya

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