in pursuit of happiness

two weeks ago i was chatting with someone who used to be my friend and he said that he wanted to be happy, and that for him meant he had to find the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with. i am insensitively bitter or immune to those things so i told him that happiness is overrated, we all do what we can and it has to be good enough, if it isn’t good enough then it has to do. i mean really, what percentage of the world’s population is actually "happy". it’s so subjective and fleeting, i can go hug my iPhone and say "wee, i’m happy" and then suddenly weep coz i don’t have it with me right now, or i could eat my favorite ice cream and sigh "happiness in a cup, at last" then whine about all the calories i would have to burn afterwards. it’s absurd to be dependent on others for your own peace of mind. i remember some years ago when i asked that same question to a friend "are you happy?", and i got this reply: "just contented". maybe that’s the key - to be contented with what we have but then again i don’t think man was ever created to be content, otherwise we would have not invented the wheel or the microwave. there’s always room to innovate even if everything is working just fine. we are always in search of something better, something more meaningful, a purpose, a reason..

so today i sent this message to yet another friend "life is sad", only because i’m like a sponge that absorbs all the negative energy around me, and when my cup overflows, i would need someone to remind me of my own words in the first place. he retorted that just days ago i was doing great and loving life then he asked what was bothering me. i couldn’t really say anything. for me, everything is a choice. i could choose to lament all the woes of my life and enumerate every reason i should be grieving but then where would that lead me? pumped up with tequila or contemplating to jump off the roof which is plain silly - i’m done with being angsty, it used to be fahionable in college, to wear your heart out on a sleeve and be an idealist who marches on the streets wanting the world to listen. the world is deaf, its a body of mass revolving around the sun. it is numb and neither will it stop turning when you fall down and hurt yourself. you will have to be strong enough to dust yourself, step back into it and get lost in its blinding speed.

life is too short to waste on melodrama, there’s the tv for that, for everything else there’s mastercard haha