I am happy but I could be happier

Sometimes in our lives we try to stay where we are most happy. To live life as if it was always within our pleasure scale. But then when we retreat back to our own lives, when we curl up on one side of our bed before going to sleep, sometimes this is when we are truly ourselves.

I know you know that I've been messed up as well. Not as grave as yours as we both know but then life just gives us so much things.. We get out own peep-out moments (maalala ka lang or something like that) or magic moments as how we've coined it. But i'm not saying that life is all bad and we have only certain times that we are truly happy. i guess it is just how we try to see things and how we sort them out. but then as we both know we do not regret anything but we learn from them. And from there we become better people.

we may hide under masks, under costumes--pretending.. pretending that everything else in life is ok, as long as you are ok.. at that moment.

Keep smiling. keep that chin up. you;ve got nothing to lose in this game called life.. coz you have everything to gain.. and it's all up to you to make it worthwhile!

I wrote this letter to one of my best friends about ten months ago. This was in a context that she has “broken up” with a guy who seemed to made her world a much better place with all the sweet talks and sweet nothings that he actually gave her for about a month. It took awhile before she could actually say that she was finally over him. It took days of keeping ourselves busy as not to remember anything that concerned him.

The chapter of my college life is about to end. Days are slowly falling off my senior year calendar and just like any student I could not help by be melancholy about all these years I spent laughing and crying with great friends. I always thought that when I finally get to college I would finally find that happiness that I have been yearning for. I thought that having much freedom would lead me to that contentment that I have been in quest for. But now that college is ending it seems that I have not reached that level of contentment in life that I have been wanting.

Augustine has said that it is not by accident that man seeks happiness. That he seeks it as a consequence of his incompleteness, his finitude. This proves to me that it is normal to feel these insecurity within me—the feeling of the need of being needed, the feeling of that constant search for happiness. It makes me realize that there will never be that day that I will finally stop and say that I am happy and this is enough. Because we can never say that enough is already enough when we ourselves are still thirsty for more.

But one thing questions me. What is this more? What can actually fulfill this thirst and hunger for happiness. Could it be something that I have always wanted to have like a new mobile phone, laptop, a good paying job right after college? In all honesty, I still do not know. Though, of all the things that I always yearned for is to get into a relationship. Yes, a love relationship. My experience with my friend and my own love-hate relationships with some guy friends I have met makes me really wonder if having a relationship would actually make me feel happy. Or would it be just like how it would be with my friend, I would just feel that happiness at that moment when it all happens. A famous song has also hit me when I start thinking of these matters. “…Isn't anyone tryin’ to find me? Won't somebody come take me home It's a damp cold night Trying to figure out this life”

Augustine also said that Man inevitably loves –going beyond he self and finding affection upon an object to love. This is due to the incompleteness we feel. With all the possibilities of the objects that I could love, Augustine would probably tell me that this is no wonder because everything is eligible to love for all these came for the one true God. So, therefore, anything or anyone could actually make me happy.

However, Augustine further explains why we continue to be unhappy and feel unfulfilled. He expounds on this by giving us the concept on disordered love—where in everything is created unique and therefore there is a need of loving these objects differently for each other. We understand from his lectures that love is an act of harmonizing these needs. Given my experiences with what I can perhaps call mishaps in love, I would say that I am a victim of this disordered love theory. Though I am not only pertaining to special someones but also to objects, events and perhaps even myself.

As a senior, I have of course experienced my own “senioritis” the so-called “sickness” that each senior in college could probably go through. I have be asking a lot of people why am I not in a relationship even though I had a somehow “platonic” one. Augustine made me realize the fact that I am perhaps loving him the wrong way or perhaps loving the wrong person given the way I love. Also, I have this tendency to be really attached to things. I find my comfort zone in certain objects that has played a big role in the chapters of my life. Yes indeed, addiction is a sickness. The moments I get in watching sitcoms that I love because it makes me laugh, listening to the music that soothes my mind and feelings, and reading the books that make me tear up due to happy endings would actually put me on that “I am contented” zone. But these “addictions” is not letting me go anywhere because I cannot expect much more than what a unique nature can actually provide.

But given all these attachments I have for these people and things, it is only though my faith that I am able to exercise the love Saint Augustine is actually explaining to us. As he said, the problem with men is that we depend on God as if he would actually give everything we want. God created everything for us and that he created things that are suitable for our own. God gives us these not to spoil us but to make us use of his creation wisely. He knows what is best suited for us and what should not be given to us.

Perhaps the next time I think about the “why I do not have these certain things in my life”, I should think that God loves me this way and he would give me these things for now at this moment. My continuous yearning for happiness will not be fulfilled with just the objects around me. Yes they are all “lovable” yet the harmonizing factor would only come with how we actually live out our faith.

In addition, if we love only to satisfy our own, we definitely love in a disorderly way. When we love we do it not for our own but for how others are able to go beyond ourselves and give ourselves to others. We can love a person properly only if we love God first. Because if we know that we cannot expect much from God, because he designed our lives, it would make us realize not to expect much from others that much too.

To love is to give.

To love is to share.

To love is one of the best gifts that God could ever give to us.