Conceptualising Happiness

The poets die. The visionaries die.

Virginia Woolf's words to her husband Leonard on the film, The Hours, which was on television just now. Funny how the the busy-ness and the events of the last few weeks all boiled down to one thing.

Happiness.

Even in social theory class at that. We talked about what Durkheim wrote about the inverse relationship between poverty and happiness. It got me really intrigued when Dr S said that happiness as a concept has been thrown out of sociological discourse by classical theorists and is only really emerging in recent times.

It is really sad that the only thing that got me happy this week was the unexpected A+ I got for my 30% paper for race and ethnic relations class. But even then, after the initial shock, euphoria and wow feeling, the low set in and then it hit me.

Durkheim was right about anomie. There is never an end to people's needs. I got an A+ now, and I want them all. You whet my appetite, and my ambition goes vaulting over the window. It sucks.

How sad that only such things can make me happy. And come to think of it - when have you ever seen me really happy?

I think most would not disagree that I am a sad person. I am a chronic melancholic.

I still find it hard that I cannot do as I am impulsed to do to make me happy because I simply cannot. Maybe M is right - just because I have been abnormal and not have any relationships yet does not make it wrong for other people to date. I should stop shaking my head and voicing my disapproval when the young ones tell me they jump from one person to another.

I just want things to be. Why must the timing be all wrong?

I find it hard to imagine what I want to do in future may not be what God wants me to do. I mean, if it is not what is intended, then why is it placed in my very being in the first place? And those barriers that I have to smash just in order that I can make it through.

Is life meant to be an eternal process of fighting against the odds?

It's tiring being a journalist with a fire in the belly. Sometimes I wish I was just as docile as the average Singaporean - so blissfully unaware and ignorant. I could chase, I could confront, but at the end if it's not going to make a difference, then what's the bloody point?

Have I been chasing for the sake of it without even me realising?

Everybody thought Mrs Dalloway was okay because she always organise parties and seemed so confident and all, but she was really not.

Watching Woolf on The Hours, I was reminded how addicted to busy-ness I am, that if you would place me somewhere where I do not even need to do anything, I will really go insane like how Woolf did when they relocated her to Richmond from London.

Jose Rizal asks what is the point of education if all it does is to blind. But what is the point if it liberates and costs more pain in the process. I'd rather remain blind.

And don't try to be too clever and tell me that it's okay that I am not happy because I have joy and all the bullshit. That is just clever legalism and word use, something that the PAP has made and art and science of.

Happiness, Joy, they all mean the same to me.

I just really want to be happy. Really.