What does happiness mean to you?


I realise that to be happy doesn't necessary mean there must be smiles, laughters, jokes or that everyone gets 'high'. Therefore, my blog remained stagnant for the past few weeks and there has been nothing much which I could blog about that can make my dear readers feel happy. I kept thinking about what happy moments that I have or things which may make you guys feel good about, but this realization hits me right in the face that in order to be happy, we have to face our own real self, and to truly accept who we are, what we have, and where we are.

We cannot escape from the truth, nonetheless.

When Ed asked me, "Sharine Toh, are you really happy?"
I had mixed emotions and I don't know why exactly.
I thought I was happy, after all the pain and healing... but no, I'm still not.

What're all these emotions within me?
Can we ever be happy totally? In this context, I meant being happy in the sense that there is inner peace and genuine emotions that we're aware of and that we accept. There needn't be smiles and laughters, if it isn't necessary.

Many times, I seek out for happiness.
Yes, I've heard about looking inside oneself to find true happiness and inner peace, many times, yet saying is easy, applying what I've learnt is the challenging part.

Many times, I seek to find someone or something to make me feel happy, but no, other people or other things cannot make me feel that permanent happiness, only temporary, and not long later, I'd find myself in deep sh*t once more, trying hard to get out of it using several ways to seek attention and help instead of appreciating and valuing what was coming for me.


Especially human relationships.
Being too close to a person enables me to discover even more ugliness in the person, and also reveal my own ugliness to him/her, but are all these really "ugly" to begin with? Aren't they just normal behaviour of a human being? I keep hearing that "no one is perfect in this earthly world", yet I don't remember this phrase at the most important times of my life.

And then, I start to dislike this person because of what he/she does or how he/she interacts with me. I focus on this person, and project what I dislike about me on this person, in order to protect myself. (This might sound quite "cheem" for some of you, but keep reading!) For instance, I dislike people who don't keep their word, who aren't punctual etc., but when I ask myself, do I always keep my word? Am I punctual all the time? At first glance, I denied, "No, I always do keep my word and am punctual what!" But at more subsequent glances, I realized that I've overlooked my blind spots. I've been convincing myself that I'm like this: I keep my promises and am punctual. In actual fact, I don't always do that.

So am I qualified to dislike others?
No.

Moreover, I also thought to myself why do we put on different masks every moment when we face different people and situations? Can't we just be the same person/real self everytime?

Yes, we can, but in this current world, it takes a lot of courage and perserverance to be able to take the defeat and blow, from the rejection of others and the environment as people's hearts are not as pure as before, and so it is usually greed that overtakes the heart.

Humans greed and desire reach out for material goods, fame and popularity, food and pleasure etc., and they usually tend to go all out for these things just to achieve the immediate but temporary happiness, and this often results in causing hurt to other people, sometimes without even knowing that they've hurt others. As people get hurt, they fear the pain and they try all means to get rid of pain, often by putting up self-defenses and/or avoiding the subject matter, such as putting up the different masks when interacting with others, so that other people don't find out that "ugliness" in us, because we fear, once again, that we don't get accepted or loved by others. We cannot take the blow of others criticizing us. We want "black coffee with sugar", not just "black coffee", because "sugar" is sweet, and we want the compliments, the respect, the love, the acceptance, the sense of belonging and home, in this world of "ugliness" and pain...


It's another time for me to look into myself again and to explore the huge iceberg below the water surface of my body.

My iceberg is going to melt someday in my life,
because I'm going to learn to love and appreciate my iceberg,
and to let go of it eventually, together with the countless masks that I put on every day.