The Takahina in Pursue of Happiness

Singaporeans are sad people, being ranked 2nd from bottom in a happiness index on a global scale definitively shows our sadness.

Overall, why are people sad? Because we can't be satisfied or be contented with life. A simple notion of happiness can come easily, from maybe just passing your driving test, to getting a very good meal, to striking a lottery, to having your favourite football team win a cup after 5 long years of drought. I believe somehow, in life to be happy, all it takes is just for you to achieve something that you want and desired, as simple as that.

Everyone then has a different notion of what they want; love, money, wealth, kinship, acceptance etc, the list goes a whole long way and the vocabulary can go on and on. The whole concept is, knowing what you want in life.

Singaporeans don't know what they want, because their whole life they have been chasing after money. Simply put, due to the circumstances that throws Singapore and Singaporeans into, to us we have to fight for money because essentially the whole country can collapse if we hadn't. The government brought us up to carry on this motion of chasing money, thus we did it unknowingly and willingly. So think of it this way, in the past we Singaporeans are content and satisfied with just sufficient money, stability of job and family. However, now with the internet and the rapid information explosion, our wants and desires aren't just the simple notion of stability, family and sustainable wealth. We want more now, we want more involvement in intrinsic terms, we want more involvement to our own life. What we want now, is not just the plain clear survival issues but more rather, how we live our lives and making it a different one.

That makes Singaporeans sad. Cause for the current working generation, they are people stuck with the midst of information explosion and the notion and age of "working for life till you die so you better be happy to work." They know of things that they wanna do but due to circumstances of Singapore, it's already too late for the normal income family to change. Sadly poor income family won't even know or care of the information explosion cause survival is already the agendas of their life, it's not anymore a dream/goal, it's an agenda or policy as you may call fit. Rich Singaporeans are most possibly the only group of people with the ability to really pursue what they want in life but due to Singapore being the small country it is, they would have to resort to overseas measures in the end and that's why you see so many people immigrating.

So as written above, to be "happy", you have to be satisfied and contented with life. To achieve it however takes 2 factors, first you got to know what you exactly want in life to be satisfied and contented with life, second you got to know how to achieve that satisfaction and content in life.

Somehow, Singaporeans faces 2 groups of people, as you can guess, its people who don't know what they want and people who can't achieve the things they want. Somehow it's always the 2 groups; few people are in the sub-set of either knowing what they want and on the route to achieve what they want or not knowing what they want and not on anyways to achieve it.

Takahina can't decide for anyone, what you should choose to be happy with life. At the same time, there are so many ways to achieve the things you want, so Takahina won't know which is the best route. Takahina already knows what he wants; to be a self sustainable pro-drummer and on regular performances with a happy family, un-spoilt kids and able to support his family sufficiently, eventually retiring and playing/reading/watching his library of games/books/manga/anime/dramas that he still haven't manage to finish.

To achieve that, Takahina would need to rely on money because being a pro-drummer is risky and may not be able to support a family and his hobby, so passive income from investments, business and assets are the way to go. Family would come eventually as love or fate decrees it. If there's no one, then I'll just adopt a kid and have that kid watch anime and play games with me, who knows.

One thing to note though, is that I'm not aiming to be super rich and wealthy. I'm just aiming for a sustainable financial status, in otherwords financial security/freedom is good enough for me. People will ask, why don't you go for constant wealth? Because, there is no need for me to be that rich. I can achieve whatever I want with life, with just that sustainable amount of income and money. If I dedicate that much amount of life and time to get as wealthy as Bill Gates, the opportunity cost with it would eat out my drumming/Japanese language goals.

This is where, I think a lot of people are mistaken about the notion of money. Money doesn't equate to happiness, unless your dream of life is about money.

Money, is a medium for a person to obtain what he wants. With money you can obtain materialistic wants, skills, knowledge or simply almost everything in this world except time. (yes I believe you can "buy" love, as long as you have the appropriate skills and knowledge) But in the end, it's just a medium. If you do not know what do you want to do with your money, you will still gain nothing. Let inflation explode and your money will still end up with nothing. Let war occur and your money will still end up with nothing. Let your life end and you will still end up with nothing.

So naturally, you will need to earn this medium to get stuff you want. If the common mode of medium now is not money but instead maybe lambs and cows, then you'll see us working hard to earn cattle. Therefore money itself is useless, but more rather the things that you will buy with money. At the same time, with the wide and complicated growth of finance, cash may not be needed, perhaps all you need by then is just credit.

Why do you see so many Singaporeans immigrating nowadays? Because Singapore lacks of something. Singapore lacks of the facilities, space and market for the younger generation to pursue their dreams. For the normal "better-off" person, they won't hesitate to go outside to accomplish the things that they want to do. Few friends I know have already went overseas to further their profession, such as Edwin with Keyboards in Malaysia and Yuan Jie with drums in US.

Why can't they do it in Singapore which is their hometown? Things will be much cheaper here and they don't risk any sense of homesick feeling. Simply because Singapore doesn't have the relevant facilities here to further their apprenticeship.

Why don't Singapore have the facilities here? Because there isn't enough space to provide for it, the opportunity cost with investing in a music school compared to a office building is too high.

Why is the opportunity cost high then? Because there is no market in Singapore at all. No one in Singapore appreciates music enough, no one in Singapore pursues music enough. Lack of market is not just a problem in Singapore, but in many other nations out there in the world. Lack of market produces lack of prospects and once again it refers the whole problem back to the basic mentality of "working to survive in Singapore".

Therefore in a sense, the whole mentality of working industriously for survival has poisoned the whole nation. Despite that, the poison is necessary, cause without it Singapore would never have survived it's early days. However, now it's a different age whereby you don't work hard, you work smart. Working hard brings you nowhere if you don't have the needed information to accelerate your path. Now with the information boom, we are able to get information readily. However it's precisely with this information boom that we are so unsatisfied.

Now we mention opportunity cost, it comes naturally that there is sacrifices involved. Everyone has their notion of happiness and simple enough to Takahina, if there's anything that will stop Takahina in his tracks to gain that happiness, Takahina will sacrifice, crossover, breakthrough or just bash his way through that obstacle (of course within legal measures). That's why it's Takahina's pursuit to happiness. Every road to happiness will require sacrifices, pain and sadness, it's only with those pain then would you fully appreciate and savour the happiness that is to come. It's a selfish approach, but in this unfair world itself, this doesn't seem unreasonable in anyway. No use being a Buddha and be good to everyone you know, cause simply no one else would be able to act as such.

If I'm the government, what would I do to curb this unhappiness? I can't do it actively, but only passively through long term methods. One method which I had suggested before is using education, another is via producing more infrastructures to facilitate the more "ignored" cultures. In spite of whatever the government do though, it will never be enough if something about Singaporeans doesn't change; the appreciation and content for things that happens. Appreciation for things beyond monetary values, content for things that comes to us.

Singaporeans are poisoned ever since we're born, poisoned by reality. And the antidote to it is ourselves. Mentality has got to change, understanding has got to increase and a balance between material means and own personal values is a must.

With the information boom that we have now, it acts as a double edge sword by providing you with more information to gain understanding, but at the same time wanting more from this information we obtained. So it can only be up to ourselves to find the sheath to prevent us from cutting ourselves.

Be happy and content people.