Superficiality in the world

Imagine a blank piece of paper. White, empty, pure. Now, it is night time, it is dark. The silhouette of a forest can be seen. In the forest, there is a clearing. In the clearing, there is a little cozy hut. Light from a fire within the hut shines out through the windows. An owl hoots in the distance. Slowly, the sun rises from the East. Golden sunlight streams into the forest through the canopy, and glints off the dew that forms on grass blades and leaves. A flower blooms. A rabbit peeps out of its burrow. Birds wake up and sing merrily. Deer venture out into the clearing and start to graze. Do you feel an overwhelming sense of peacefulness? Do you feel happy, calm, content? If you do, congratulations. Many people aren’t able to feel this way anymore.

I am a simple person. All I want in life, is peacefulness and contentment. There are many complexities in life that we face. We want many things. We want to accomplish great things. We want a luxurious lifestyle. We want a raffles diploma with distinction. And yet, in the pursuit of all these things, we get so stressed out. We lose our happiness. For me, I am a simple person. I just want to live in that picture I painted. I love the nature. My dream house is built of logs and bricks, not glass and concrete. I would love to live in a forest, go gather berries, cut firewood, make snares to capture innocent little creatures for lunch. I would love to cuddle with the love of my life, in front of a cozy fireplace, as lightning flashes outside the door, with the sound of thunder, rain and wind in the background.

Of course, set in a world like this, what I want is so impossible to get. Where on Earth am I supposed to find such a setting, especially since I'm stuck in Singapore. How am I supposed to survive in that setting? I can just imagine my life. I'm going to study, go to university, get a degree, come back to Singapore and work, marry, work, work, and work even more. Then I'll die without realizing my dreams. This is the world I live in, something which I have grudgingly accepted. There's nothing I can do to change this superficial world where the beauty of Mother Nature is so often left forgotten, beside shallow things like money and power. What most people want nowadays is to be seen as the so-called 'popular' crowd, never mind if no one actually likes the people in that crowd. They want money, they want people to look up to them, they want to have the right to sneer at people, to look at the less unfortunate and coo with faked pity. They want to buy all the various luxuries, not so they can enjoy them, but so that other people can identify them as the 'rich' people. But I think, the truly luxurious items are from nature, and the truly rich are the ones that can appreciate it.

I hope I haven't offended anyone, I don't mean to call anyone superficial or shallow. I just find it so tragic and ironic that though we are supposed to have developed through the ages, and thus enjoy a better quality of life, our minds and perceptions have changed such that happiness has become an impossible goal. We work all our life in pursuit of happiness, but we never are content with what we have. We want more and more, thinking that the next unit of returns we receive would make us happier. But in fact, we are going in the wrong direction-- letting go and going back to a simple lifestyle is the road to happiness