lily kong

Planning

the future - over matching peppermint teas and notepad diagrams. If only it were that easy.

Dia

On Happiness

I often wonder why people of our generation feel so reluctant to let themselves be happy. Maybe it’s because happiness seems too simple, and our privileged lives and brains can’t accept the fact that it’s okay to just be happy. Maybe happiness is not as exciting as turmoil, and maybe we are plagued with perpetual boredom. Why must we get snagged on hooks of unresolved disappointment when it’s the logical, simpler solution to let things be and move on?

 Maybe it is because we forget that simple happiness is even an option. Maybe chronic distress and dissatisfaction are so deeply conditioned, that their hold on our state of being makes us feel more comfortable than the alternative. Maybe it takes more energy to be affirmatively happy than to have affliction “happen” to us. Maybe we are muting our inclinations to have high expectations, lest that fragile happiness be brought down before we are ready to let it go.

Maybe our egocentric selves can’t handle bruising and refuse to heal because healing would be an admission of a defeat in the first place. Maybe it is purely because we are a masochistic society, or maybe it is what it is, on its face – that working really is that miserable, people really suck that much, there really is not that much to look forward to, and we are really that dissatisfied.

Maybe we are actually are,hurting.

Of course – certain circumstances warrant all of the feelings and states of being mentioned above. I do not mean “happy”in this blind-to-the-genuine-afflictions-of-an-individual kind of way. What I’m talking about is not letting dissatisfaction, ambivalence, and even unstitched scars become our unnecessarily gloomy defaults. Although it has become easier to marinate in pseudo-misery than to look upwards, maybe it is time to extend some effort to own up to the things that are good in our lives.

Whatever the reason - whatever the source of this illogical, counter-intuitive phenomenon, we all need to be released from it. We all need freedom. 

So the next time someone asks you, “How was your day,” remember that it really is a simple concept in theory. It might even be an individual choice. Before you bust an Eeyore and find yourself saying, “It was just okay,” perhaps being a little arrogant about how there was nothing actually dysfunctional in your day would be alright; it probably won’t offend the person you’re conversing with.

And maybe the next time you feel hung-up over something or someone you know is toxic to your well being, be a simpleton and do the logical thing that eliminates your roadblock to happiness by saying “no” to your bruised ego that insists on holding on.

Maybe when you feel your brain defaulting into scapegoating others for things that are imperfect and complaining about this, and that, and this, and that, realize that you are so, freaking, fortunate to be alive.

And maybe this is opening a can of worms that need not be opened, but perhaps the reason for all of this unhappiness stems from the tunnel vision that we’ve all developed centered on me, myself, and I.  Maybe changing that bit up a little might do us some good.

Yogurt Dip

It’s really nice to be back in San Francisco. I had a proper reunion with the farmer’s market and went on a ginormous Trader Joe’s run. There’s nothing like it. Today I had toasted pugliese bread with spread yogurt chive dip, topped with panfried zucchini and grilled chicken. Mmm mmm mmm.