31 things to say for a month - Day 27: The Pursuit of Happiness

Day 27: Happiness at different stages of your life

This post is an interlude of my previous posts on my Europe trip. I have wanted to write on this topic for the longest time ever since 2013 but somehow it got saved as a draft and was never published. I am currently reading a book titled, "The Pursuit of Happiness - an economy of well-being" by Carol Graham and had so much insights that I wanted to revive my discussion on this topic.

Carol Graham mentioned two types of happiness - Benthamite sense and Aristotelian sense. Jeremy Bentham's concept of welfare was hedonic utility: maxmising the contentment and pleasure of the greatest number of individuals as they experienced their lives. Aristotle thought of happiness as eudaimonia, a Greek word that combined two concepts: "eu" meaning well-being or abundance, and "daimon" meaning the power controlling an individual's destiny. [Source: Carol Graham]. In simple terms, the former is associated with contentment in day-to-day living whereas the latter looks at the opportunities available to lead a fulfilling life.

For a certain period of time, I did feel very upset with what was going on in my life and how I felt I seem to be drifting away from my long-term goals and what I had EXPECTED myself to achieve. Though I had a lot of leisure time to engage in activities that I enjoy - sports, music, watching dramas, reading, etc. and I had sufficient income to support myself on a daily basis, I did not experience an improvement in my well-being. Sometimes, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling frustrated and upset about what I had done to my life. Neither money nor leisure kept me happy which was odd since economics has taught me that both are key sources of utility that keep people going. It was after my adventures to Europe that I returned with a fresh perspective of life and figured out my next step in life and two months after the new year has begun, I can be very sure that I have been putting my time to good use.

So after reading this book, I have a better sense of the source of my unhappiness or happiness. In the book, the author cited empirical data of how people's happiness or well-being level is a U-shaped function of age. That's why people love to reminisce about their childhood and when they enter retirement, they are also happier. For me, I guess is because I emphasise more on Benthamite sense of happiness as a child/ teenager whereby my needs were pretty simple - food, sleep and fun. However, as I age, I start to focus on searching for a meaning in life. Someone told me that I should ignore my ideals about life and just think about making as much money as I can while I still have the energy and capability. I replied the person with certainty that even if I have loads of money, I will not be truly happy. At that point in time, I had not figure out the reason but after reading this book, I guess I have found the answer.

It was mentioned in the book that there are many causes behind why certain people emphasise Aristotelian sense of happiness (like I do). It could be due to personality, upbringing, personal experiences, agency and capability, etc. People without agency are more likely to be contented with a decent lifestyle on a day to day basis and do not think so much about whether they had led a fulfilling life in their lifetime. There is no right or wrong as to which sense of happiness is more superior since our circumstances could also pretty much shape our ability to search for a particular sense of happiness. So the book mentioned the happiness irony of the "happy peasant vs frustrated achievers". I think a few months ago, I was at the stage of my life whereby I truly felt like a frustrated achiever and that was my main source of unhappiness. Knowing the cause of your own unhappiness is key to helping you overcome your frustrations, IMO. So I cannot ask for a more appropriate timing for this book to appear.

At a certain juncture in my teaching career, I did wonder why I do not foresee myself teaching for the rest of my life though I really enjoy the interaction with the youths and seeing them make progress in their studies and academics. Besides graduate school, I really do not know from where had I found the courage to quit my job and chose to be unemployed instead. I took a pay cut switching to another sector but at no point in my life had I been so sure that teaching is not the route for me for the rest of my life. I guess the joy and satisfaction from teaching is one of Benthemite sense to me and they are unable to fill me in the long term. I dream dreams and I want to accomplish them in order to truly lead a fulfilling life and I am sure I have the ability and determination to realise them if I continue to be steadfast in my pursuits and not give up in the face of setbacks along the way.

2015, you have been a fantastic year thus far and please continue to be! Rather, I will make it happen!

Sacrificing sleep for Mitch Albom's books!

Mitch Albom's books never fail to sweep me off my feet. This time round, "Have a little faith" indeed did not disappoint. Just a few meaningful excerpts from the book:

It's perfectly fine to say "Someone is imperfect but they don't need improvement because it simply means you are willing to accept them as they are."

Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.

There is no cynism in the line of work revolving faith. Let me answer with a story, "There's this salesman, see?" And he knocks on a door. The man who answers says, "I don't need anything today."

The next day, the salesman returns. "Stay away", as he is told. The next day, the salesman is back. The man yells, "You again! I warned you!" He gets so angry he spits in the salesman's face. The salesman smiles, wipes the spit with a handkerchief, then looks to the sky and says, "Must be raining."

That's what faith is. If they spit in your face, you says it must be raining. But you still come back tomorrow.

Make a case against God; When you come to the end, that's where GOD begins.

Why do bad things happen to good people? ..... Because when you lose someone you love, you can curse GOD. You can yell. You can blame him. You can demand to know why. But when you don't believe in God, and things happen, you can only blame yourself. "Oh yes, it is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody's out there."

Most religions warn against war, yet more wars have been fought over religion than perhaps anything else. Sodom and Gomorrah.... But so many people wage wars in God's name. God does not want such killing to go on. But MAN does.

When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched. Because a baby, not knowing better, wants to grab everything, to say, "The world is mine." But when an old person dies, his hands are open because he has learned the less, "We can take nothing with us."

What do people fear most about death? And Thomas Hardy answers in his poem

"They count as quite forgot, They are as men who have existed not, Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath. It is the second death."

Fear of being forgotten - That's the second death.

Marriage & Commitment: What do you lose if you don't commit? "A happiness you cannot find alone."

The same things in life can be good or evil, depending on what, with free will, we do with them. Speech can bless or curse. Money can save or destroy. Science can heal or kill. Even nature can work for you and against you: fire can warm or burn; water can sustain life or flood it away. Nowhere in the story of Creation do we read the word "bad". From the beginning, God put this world into our hands so we were created with a piece of divinity inside us called free will. And what God does is watch us every day lovingly, praying that we will make the right choices.

Everyone has done some bad things in his life. But it's not about you against the other guy. It's God measuring you against you. "Maybe all you get are chances to do good, and what little bad you do ain't much bad at all. But because has God has put you in the position where you can always do good, when you do something bad - it's like you let God down. And maybe people who only get chances to do bad, always around bad things, like us, when they finally make something good out of it, God's happy."

It's amazing how folks can't see you, cause they want to keep you in that past. They just looked at your past. And when we're still looking at ourselves through our past, we're not seeing what God has done. What He can do! We're not seeing the little things that happen in our lives. You knew me. You knew that person, but you don't know the person that I'm trying to become. Judge Not.

It's amazing how all these excerpts struck a chord in me as I was reading. Another 10 years down the road, these excerpts will continue to remind me of how the book has touched my heart for I probably would not have the time to re-read it again. Perhaps, some day I will. Just like I would relish the opportunity to journey through "Tuesdays with Morrie."

It seemed too small for what I wanted to achieve in life, like being stuck wearing your grade school clothes. I had dreams of travelling, making foreign friends in foreign cities. I had heard the phrase "citizen of the world." I wanted to be one.

Reflections...

Yeah, I am getting better day by day... Hopefully by the start of a new month, I will make it back to the courts and track, be it a jog, a badminton game or a tennis rally?!

Ever since my return from Europe, I have been reading quite a bit... Book after book.. For those who love reading, I strongly recommend the bOok, A Thousand Splendid Suns... The title has absolutely no link with the content of the book. The title came from a poetry in Arabic, that's all. I love how the story is being relayed and I think the contents are very much reflections of the world today. Where's the love?!

I finished yet another book today-Never let me go. When I first started on it, I felt the storyline was quite boring. It's so abstract, relating to clones and their lives. But as I dwell deeper into the story, I began to see things in a different light. Many a times in life, I told myself that everyone has the freedom and right to pursue what they want in life and if I ever come across someone who don't, I think that's because he or she is not putting in enough effort. However, I realise there may be variations to it. Everyone has unique ways of achieving what they want in life. By taking a laid-back approach doesn't mean they are not pursuing what they want in life. Are you more assertive or do you prefer to be passive?!

I am in love with books nowadays. :)