The other day I had the most heartwarming conversation with Mr. Chiu. It was a question that throughout all our lives, we will constantly come back to. The question was: How do I be happy?
He talked about a girl who wanted him to stop being negative about the prospects of her sports team. To her positivity or happiness was behaving like everything was ok. But Mr. Chiu taught me that happiness was only a feeling so like all emotions, it naturally will go away. What we should truly look for in life is satisfaction. That is you are allowed to be sad or happy one day because at the end of the day you will be satisfied with what you had done. I agreed but can humans ever actually be satisfied? No.
When I was like 10, my first answer to this question was that I wanted to make enough money to retire early and only watch anime for the rest of my life. Cringe. What’s even funnier, is that anime has become so monotonous- the same isekais, harems and fight series- that I am now bored of it. And this is telling, because happiness is just a feeling. As such, it could never last and more than that, we do not often want it to.
One of my favourite contemporary figures is Slavoj Zizek and in one of his exciting but equally insightful ramblings he said that human beings can never be happy, because when we achieve our happiness, we will inevitably become bored of it. I agree. I relish my beach vacations but simply sleeping, reading and sunbathing everyday would kill me; soon I would die of boredom.
Hence what humans genuinely want is it to desire happiness, not have it. As such, when they reach this “happy” point, they start to desire more to continue this cycle. This is probably why we see athletes like Novak Djokovic still training every day to win the next Grand Slam when he has won about 23 so far. I mean lying down is nice but imagine doing the same thing every day for the rest of your life. Wouldn’t you get bored? We all travel, meet new people, change life paths, learn new skills and do new things. We will also forever put ourselves in artificial hardship, that we are always doing something.
So, if we do not want to feel happy and if we will never be satisfied with where we are in our lives, then how do we answer that question? My answer is that we become happy, when our life has purpose.
This is Viktor Frankl’s theory of logotherapy. He theorised that our motivation to live is our life’s meaning. In his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” Frankl describes one of his patients. For years, a man was struggling to work at his current job. Other therapists attributed this to trauma. They tried to unpack and process his history with authority figures like his father. This happened for years, but he saw no improvement. But when he came to Frankl, Frankl uncovered that he simply felt unfilled in his job and guess what? This man finally became happy when he moved to a new job that had meaning to him. So, if you are despising what you are doing currently, think: “Why am I even doing this?” and if you have to do it, think: “How can I make this be meaningful to me?” Then extend this meaning to all areas of your life.
I spoke with a man the other day on the Seabus. He was called a nigger when he was 2. He lost an eye to his mother. His body was scarred all over from the hundreds of fights he got in, fights he had to fight because people discriminated against him. Now, he lives in the Downtown Eastside where he still has to fight every day against that racism. All this torment sent him into a mental breakdown some time ago. But when I spoke to this man, I did not see someone who was tired, sad, hopeless and done with life. He spoke with immense strength and said what keeps him going is his will to help, but more than that. his will to fight back against everything that hopes to pull him down, because he knows his life has purpose.
His will to fight back stuck with me and so I hope to give it to you as well. So, in all your relationships have purpose. What everlasting impact do you want to have on those around you? In all your endeavours have purpose. What do you want for yourself? How do you want to change the world? In all your words have purpose. What words do you want to be remembered by? Finally, with every step you take, take it with purpose. Because if you do that, no matter what hardships you see before you, you know you walk through them and even though you may not see light tomorrow, you know that you have more to go.
When one’s life has meaning, you feel an emotion even more heartrending than happiness; you feel like you have finally done something. And that brings you a satisfaction that your life not only has meaning, but also means something to others.