The Sunday Times, June 15, 2008:

I So Want To Be Happy by Sumiko Tan

“But why is it so hard? Is the pursuit of happiness making me miserable instead?”

When a dream comes true, you don’t always get the happiness you thought would come with it;

Happiness is not something you can feel every moment of the day;

Happiness comes in small doses, so just be grateful for that;

It’s pointless to wish for a Big Happiness because it won’t happen;

Perhaps happiness is overrated.

Wikipedia describes happiness as am emotion associated with feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense joy. It is said that about 50% of a person’s happiness depends on his genes. A further 10-15% comes from variables such as socio-economic status, marital status, health and income. The remaining reasons do not have a discernible cause.

I so yearn to be happy and I so want to be happier. The irony is that this hunger and search for happiness is perhaps the reason I often find myself unhappy.

The problem with unhappiness is this – it doesn’t last, and it is subjected to the law of diminishing returns.

Some scientist believe that everyone has an innate happiness “set point” to which he will invariably return to.

Good and bad events may move you from this set point for awhile, but you can’t permanently raise or lower your in-born happiness level – or so the theory goes.

What is clearer is that, like most things in life, happiness is subjected to the law of diminishing returns – to attain something you wish for does make you happy, but only up to a point. Beyond that, more and more of that thing adds less and less to your happiness.

Happiness is so hard to come by, yet when I do find it, it either doesn’t last long, or it loses it magic after awhile…

Still, one could argue that happiness would be meaningless if you felt happy all the time. How can you understand happiness unless you have lived through unhappiness and compare the two?

The trick perhaps is to learn live for the moment and appreciate what you have.

It is hard to be happy when you are stuck in the past or the future. It is hard to be happy when you chase after happiness, forgetting that, hey, it could be well right there, staring at you.

**Project Updates:

1st phase – COMPLETE!