"1080p haha swaggg," I joked as I was still thinking of how to answer this kind of questions for years. "Yours?" I asked her back as a sign of good manners.
"To be happy for the rest of my life." That's what she said a year ago. So did she two years ago. And three years ago...
I suppose this is the "ultimate answer" to any other questions like "What did you wish for on your birthday?" or "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And isn't this what we all want? To be happy even when you fuck up your life or even when life fucks you up. But let's be honest - nobody wants to fuck up his/her life or be fucked up by life. So what they really meant was: I wish life wouldn't suck and would turn out the way I wanted it to.
There has been a number of people that kept telling me their "great discovery": They have realized that their wishlists get shorter and shorter every year because the things they want have become much more difficult to obtain.
We think we want less as the list gets shorter, but in fact we've become greedier little bastards, because we've been taught that the only thing that contains everything we want is happiness - Happiness is family reunion. Happiness is getting offers from your favorite universities. Happiness is being popular. It's good music. It's a dream car. It's the good time spent with your partner. It's wealth, etc. And as a teenager, I'd have to agree, because we always think we have everything figured out. We would say what we always say when the more experienced generation tries to lecture us, "No, mom, no, dad, you don't understand. Don't tell me how to live my life." If I had a daughter, I would reply her with, "Honey, you want family reunion, you want offers from your favorite universities, you want popularity, good music, a dream car, the good time spent with your boyfriend, you want wealth... You don't want happiness." Because that was what my father told me, too.
Most of the time, we've cheated ourselves to believe that getting all of these means being happy, and we've forgotten the true meaning of happiness.
A while ago, my sister and I were taking a stroll along the pier near my neighborhood. She told me that there were some relationship matters that were bothering her and holding her down. She was scared that she couldn't be with the one she loved when she came to the late years of her life. At that point she was having trouble with her boyfriend. And after listening to her concerns, I was confused. Most of our sufferings come from the anxiety we impose on ourselves. It means that we always set limitations or goals for ourselves to meet, and then worry about if we will meet them someday. And the minor failures we encounter always bat us down and constantly make us reconsider if we've set the right goals for ourselves. I remember a friend once said to me, "何必只看眼前說一生" In English, it means, "Why do we have to define life just by looking at what's happening right before our eyes?" And in many ways, it's true. We always live life in fast forward, too busy to rush through everything, so we can get on what we're really supposed to be doing with our lives. Nobody ever stops and enjoys the moment, and one day we'll end up in the ground and realize, this is it. This is our life. And that will be it. We'll be gone.
I am sitting in the corner of Starbucks, listening to the playlist I made myself, drinking a grande vanilla latte, putting my thoughts into words. I might not be scoring a 4.3 GPA in the coming semester; I might not be spending time with the boy I love the most now; I might not get a sound sleep tonight, but I am happy. I am happy because I have this moment. So to my sister's anxious mood that night, I told her that maybe we should never look at life as a big picture. Look at the woman walking her dog there, I said, look at the old men dancing with beers in their hands in that bar across the street. Look at now. Life doesn't start there. Life doesn't start when you finally have everything. Life starts here. Life is made of small moments like these. Failures are just a constant factor that reminds us of reality just in case our heads are in the clouds. Our generation is so wounded because they need everything in order to be happy. If happiness was everything, then it must be hella hard for you to be happy. Teenagers think they are smart, but they only have the quick-wit to imagine life as the things they have seen or heard of. We often forget that the best feeling is the weightless float on our way back up after hitting rock bottom.
American poet Mary Oliver said, "Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable." This always reminds me that in fact there's so much more to this life than we can possibly see or touch or understand. The unimaginable is exactly what makes everything easier. Sometimes the peace of mind comes from the surrender to reality's mystery.
So what's my New Year's Resolution?
Let's just live in the moment and whatever happens will happen.
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