WHO’S HAPPIER?

Life is about struggling and striving. Life is about fighting. And winning! Life is about enjoying good living; to certain extent we might want to indulge ourselves in flashy, exorbitance and luxurious livelihood for good measure.

When I am at the apogee of my own easy-me-philosophy, I would say to myself, luxurious living is just like when you are holding your pee for hours that your bladder is about to burst and there you are at the toilet bowl enjoying it with the eyes closed in ecstasy, hence, you don’t want to trade for anything else in this world. Luxurious that is.

Perhaps, it’s not luxury as what luxury is but what luxury would bring.

Since I am not trained to be that sophisticated in life, I have a feeling that I can enjoy my RM 10 better than others spending their RM 100. May be I can sleep soundly and wake up happily in a master bedroom of my 2-storey end-lot terrace house in Saujana Utama than an opulent waking up in his flush bedroom overlooking a swimming pool in his 3-and-a-half storey mansion in Country Heights.

Or may be he is actually far happier, and I am only a fool for being imbecile and moronic for thinking that way? He could be relishing for his fine champagne at the back of his chauffeured driven stretch, laughing, while I’d be busy checking on possibilities of meeting him with his secretary to knock a deal or two.

Or may be the unpretentious chap with 7 small kids without shirts sleeping in a hall with mosquito coils stop burning, in the slump of a squatter area in Keramat, is waking up a happier person?

Who knows, may be an indigenous man of Orang Asli tribe deep in the jungle of Gombak wakes up in his makeshift hut to the traces of the aroma of last night's roasted wild boar in the fire and yet have a whole world in his grip, the whole universe funneling into him? Happier!

Happiness, in a sense of word, it is too broad a scale for one to rap it up cleverly. A banal line of cliché we often heard, happiness is subjective and hence, definition-wise, it is an emotional state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. A great philosopher, Aristotle, stated that happiness is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake. Men sought riches not for the sake of being rich, but to be happy. Those who sought fame desired it not to be famous, but because they believed fame would bring them happiness.

In the context, I think it is the same thing when I was in my stride having my dinner with “ulam” and “ike tawar” to go with “budu”. And... I love “ike singge” and “ikan rebus goreng” too – I’ll put aside those lobsters. If I were to equate to what I understand philosophically, it’s not the things I eat that make me happy but the enjoyment and satisfaction of eating those that makes me happy.

But nothing compared to the time when you are all alone with God in the middle of a quiet night crying and weeping on the prayer mat with a tinge of hope for forgiveness for the sins you had done and God trades you up with special feelings for you to go on living.

Are you a happy person? And what makes you happy?