The Happiness of Pursuit

I need to rest as I've been staring at the computer screen all day for the past week. I went for a haircut at the mall and had a leisurely stroll through the aisles of a bookstore and as always, ending up with a couple of new purchases.

The crowd is coming back to all the shopping places and that's a boon for the retail businesses. We are supposedly entering the endemic phase of the Covid-19 pandemic where we learn to live with it, with so-called 'standard operating precedures' or SOP, which Malaysians have adopted as part of their everyday vocabulary.

Will we go back to our old habits of spending, littering and generally, consuming in excess? We certainly will because it is in our nature. It is also our nature to forget, which may not necessarily be a bad thing, as I've argued many times in previous blog articles. But pain is a great etcher of memory and hopefully we've learned many such painful memories during the pandemic.

While we complain about the many inconveniences which the pandemic had brought us, Ukranians are now living under the fear of being bombed to smithereens by their Russian neighbours. When our everyday ordinary lives are being disrupted, we'll start to appreciate more of what we've always had. All the ordinary things that we take for granted--a walk in the park, browsing the latest bestsellers at the bookstore, slurping through your wonton noodles at your favourite hawker stall or simply going to the ATM to withdraw cash--become longingly beautiful.

Life is great and we make it unbearable by wanting too much. We yearn to be elsewhere, to find the life partner of our dreams, to have that perfect job that provides the position and perks and the recognition of others. We should start appreciating the fact that we even have that opportunity and possibility of chasing after these yearnings of the heart. Being able to do the things that you set out to do is what that matters. Happiness--the everyday mortal variety--is found in the act of pursuit.