[Drysnyaty]

lots of insights here on happiness. I asked the question "what is happiness?" because lots of people have been asking me "and now that you've been in Thailand almost a year, are you happy?" and I just couldn't answer the question right away, I said the concept of happiness just doesn't make sense in these circumstances, I am neither happy, nor unhappy. I have a job I am totally absorbed in, so I don't think about self-realisation or personal growth or anything along those lines, I am merely living, and it's a kind of sustainable balance I am living, meaning that I know I can go on with it for the time being, there are no deadlines in me about moving on, having to move on because of sensing it is something temporary, something not sustainable financially or emotionally or "overworkedly". even when I wasn't working in the past year, I was trying to get out, take pics, get absorbed in events (luckily, my unemployment in Chiang Mai coincided with the summer season packed with holidays), avoid having to be left alone and having to think about anything, let alone myself. my life has just been too much "me, me, me", it tends to be if you are long-term unemployed and getting depressed, and that's not sustainable. so now I don't really care about myself, I use all my energy for my work, it's really something that demands a lot from me but I don't mind most of the time. I as an individual being with personal dreams and aspirations cease to exist when I am there as a teacher, and that is so much more fulfilling than struggling with my personal dreams and blablablah junk. but when I try to explain this to friends back home, the reply I get is, "oh, so you're escaping? you must be really unhappy!" but I'm not. I just try to exist so that it doesn't hurt me so much having to exist, something like that.

ok, I guess it's too personal, but I guess it is kind of the same, though definitely not in the same league, when people work all the time, and they have families to raise, they struggle to make ends meet, they have communities to run, that they damn don't sit down and ponder about being happy or about the meaning of happiness or unhappiness, they are just busy existing or somehow, at a physical, emotional, spiritual level, beating the odds of having to exist, or trying to come to terms with the realities of having to exist and achieve some kind of balance and peace of mind.

I like the way Anatta put it in the first sentence of the previous post.