Speech delivered at the Area A5 International Speech Contest, 28 February 2021. The transcript below may not exactly match what was spoken.
Am I happy? Well, I'm not sad, so I'm happy, right? Happiness is the absence of sadness, isn't it? Or is it more ephemeral?
When we try to articulate the purpose of our lives, it is to the word happiness that we turn to. We spend much of our lives thinking about how happy we are, worrying whether we are happy enough and comparing our happiness to what others appear to possess. We tell ourselves the ultimate rationale for our jobs, our relationships and our conduct is the pursuit of happiness.
But where is this happiness coming from? Tell me from where you buy this happiness so that I can get it as well. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be always happy all the time. I bunked classes to go to the movies with my friends, I eschewed doing homework to go play, and I got into fights over movies instead of studying for my finals. All these brought me happiness in the moment, but as soon as that moment was over, I wasn't happy anymore. I was back to the pursuit of happiness, trying to find something else.
But after a while, it felt as if happiness is a word with no meaning, an empty sound which we always yearn for and never achieve. Our lives are filled with empty pleasures, a succession of events which we think give us happiness but only end up making us feel hollow. All throughout my adolescence I jumped from passion to passion, drawn like a moth to a distant flame, not knowing that I'd end up getting burnt at the end of my journey, back to square one in the pursuit of happiness.
But that wasn't what happiness was. My friend taught me that. He was my polar opposite in many ways. I was visibly happy but not content. He wasn't visibly happy but he was always content. One day, as we were sitting at our usual haunt near the school gates, I told him I wasn't feeling really happy that day. It was nothing in particular that caused me to feel that way. I wasn't sad, I told him, just not happy.
My friend told me he wasn't happy either, but he wasn't sad. Then he said something which has stuck with me all this time. "If we were happy all the time, then it wouldn't be special, would it — we'd just be existing, and there would be nothing special about it." I was appalled. I told him if we didn't try to be happy, we would end up being sad, and that was worse than being happy all the time. But my friend had an answer for that as well. "If you ask me," he said, "at the end of the day, I'd rather be satisfied with the work I've put into my life than trying to be always happy and never sad."
It was a curious thing to say. I'd never heard of satisfaction used as a benchmark for life before. The only things that made me satisfied were my teacher being satisfied with my homework and my parents being satisfied with my marks. My own feelings did not really enter into the matter till then. I tried to do what my friend told me to do. One entire day, I worked hard. I put my all into listening in class, doing my homework, playing with my friends and just making sure I lived up to the image I had of myself in my head, so that I'd be satisfied.
That night, when I flopped onto my bed after an exhausting day, sleep was swift to claim me. But in those few moments before I closed my eyes, snuggled in my blankets, I felt satisfied, warm, and dare I say it, content. It was then I realised what my friend was speaking about. I didn't need to pursue happiness anymore.
True happiness doesn't come from chasing empty pleasures and temporary joys. Happiness is a constant struggle, against ourselves and against the life we choose to live. But it is through this struggle that we attain the highest form of that emotion. Happiness isn't a goal which, once achieved, stays forever with us — it's a target towards which we have to strive throughout our lives.
When we achieve something significant by working for it, however small the act might be, the satisfaction we gain stays longer with us than whatever happiness we might get from chasing it. The Greeks had a word for this: eudaimonia. It is the feeling of a life well-lived, a life spent struggling against the pursuit of empty happiness and living with virtue. A life where we live with the satisfaction of having triumphed against our struggles.
I'm now living a life of struggle and satisfaction, not one in the pursuit of happiness. A life which is more fulfilling than one only happiness would offer me. I'm no longer just happy — now I'm content. What about you?