"To me, the meaning of life is to be happy. It's to achieve happiness right now, it's to make sure you're happy in the future, and that generally when you look back on your life you're like; ‘Ah, yes, that was satisfactory.’"
Dear Upa,
As a 13-year-old who religiously modelled herself after strangers on the Internet, all logic and reason told me that Dan’s definition of "the meaning of life" was the gospel truth.
And 5 years later, that hasn't really changed.
I think essentially what most of us want from life is to be happy. But statistically, we're probably not. Recently India fell to the 122nd rank in the list of world's happiest countries (which has 155 countries) from it's previous rank of 118, and while that sucks, it’s not completely unbelievable.
I guess there are way too many things to be sad about. The world we live in is pretty shit, life is too stressful and people are too mean.
A few days ago when I started writing this post I wanted it to be a reminder of how I’m allowed to be happy sometimes. That nothing is worth it if I’m not actually happy. But I don’t think I’m sure even I believe that.
Maybe we overstate happiness. Maybe sometimes we tend to dwell too much on the weight of life's problems and that sometimes, we're too afraid to be happy because we think we don't deserve it. Maybe there are way too many terms and conditions attached to being happy.
But at the end of the day the fact is that we’re not happy. I’m actually freaking sad right now and it sucks and I’m whining and this is not supposed to be a personal diary and I should probably deal with it instead of whining about it into the void but no matter how much I try to ignore it I can’t. I remember saying that I’m not stupid enough to be happy but that didn’t mean that I want to be sad, man.
I don’t mind being upset because I have too much to study and I don’t mind being unhappy because there’s nothing to be happy about, but it’s getting increasingly hard to prepare myself for the inevitable disappointment that awaits me because I wanted so much to prove to myself that I’m not completely useless and to make my parents proud.
I keep telling myself to stop crying and to start studying for the next paper, but it just won’t stop. After talking to Buddy about it I think the only way to calm down is to rant about it here and get back to work.
I’m sorry you have to read this. I know it’s draining and I don’t want to feel this way, and I know I’m going to regret posting this in the very tangible future, but I couldn’t figure out what to do.
Despite everything, I still think it's okay to let little things make you happy. I still think it's a waste to spend time not being happy. I want to believe being happy is not a crime, and that things will get better if we let them. I know that there are still things worth smiling about.
"Happiness is not something that you have to achieve, you can still feel happy during the process of achieving something.”
And as an 18-year-old who religiously models herself after strangers on the Internet, all logic and reason makes me want to agree with Namjoon.
I don’t want to be sad, but I also don’t want to be a disappointment.
But the future is something that involves more factors than one, and all I can do is keep doing my best. That way, when I screw up, atleast I’ll know I tried. Being mediocre is not something that’s under my control.
I know I’m allowed to be happy. I really hope you’re happy (or at least not sad).
Sometimes, against all logic, against all reason, we're allowed to be happy.
I don’t know what’s going to happen or how badly I’m going to mess up, but I hope that when I read this in the future, I’m happy.
Bye for now,
Aditi.
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