This has been one of those great weekends where Saturday felt like a Sunday, hence Sunday felt like an extra day off. Which has left me time to be pensive over complex topics one should not spend too much time thinking about.
Like being happy. Over Thai food in Penang last Thursday night, my friend LCL tells me that the thing that keeps people from being happy is their Ego. Emm...hmm? She explains that Ego is what causes people the need to feel different from others. When really of course, we are all part of one another and part of the same body of...God.
Stay with me here.
Sometimes I suppose we do revel / wallow in our past experiences, hanging on long past their memorabilia due date because these make us feel that we have encountered a depth of something that others may not be enriched enough to understand, making us more special because we did. We "survived". Add sentimentality and you're singing too much of Pink's "Who Knew" when someone leaves your life - a death of sorts. Add cleverness and sometimes you get prejudice.
Doesn't help either that happiness is a pretty commonplace thing. Let's face it, most of the time we don't realise we had it until we get into an unhappier place and look back. Plus, happiness is a current thing, and living in the present is always scary - running the same circles of lessons unlearnt from the past has at least some hopeless certainty to it.
Maybe we shouldn't be afraid of forgetting since it's harder to forget than we think anyway. Maybe we shouldn't be afraid of a blank canvas everyday, although it may turn out to be empty, lonely or just plain boring.
1 comment:
Read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
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