My phone blimps with another new year’s greeting. I cringe at the poor, distasteful WhatsApp graphics, but the serenity of human emotions has me lathered up in warmth. Watching the screen fade back to black, I contemplate a meaningful response.

I am well aware of the subtleties of human conversations, at times such exercises are vague. Taking part in an irrational belief would be hypocritical. Ignoring these texts could put me off as an egoist. Some people might understand my dire lack of faith, some would never notice, but some of them would dearly mind, but more than their imposed judgement, it is an exercise I am willing to expose to.

 How does a person who doesn’t even believe in birthdays respond to a New Year’s greeting?

Drenched in whiskey, munching s’mores around a humbly lit rooftop fire, my “New Year’s Party” is an inferior version of what you see on Instagram. No fancy location, no music, but a little gathering of a few people I adore and their untamed discussions, where I’m involved in every one of them.

Social media is flooded with a sudden surge of realisations, lessons and goals, new practices and catalogues and all things wild and dreamy. Although I relate to the people, it is hard to find a sense of belonging here. Someone got a brand new car, another one got hitched, and that girl is out in the mountains again while a thin dress hangs dearly over her bare shoulders, brazen with the mid-winter frost, coldly advocating subtle signs of success and a new “better” wave of normalcy. I am nowhere close to any of this.

Are people really as happy as they portray on social media?

The new year has already settled in. We are half a day into this beginning, everybody retired; while in bed, I toss and turn watching the subtle restlessness grow bolder. I am jobless, financially challenged and way behind in every social milestone they talk about. Every aspect of me reeks of failure. I have to stop and resolve this feeling right now. The flowers that bloom out of such seeds spawn pungent and a guaranteed implied mental doom obeys.

Dare I ask, “Am I happy?”, while all telltales infer otherwise.

“No”, this is the wrong question. I cannot depend on a vague description of happiness when too many redundant twenty-first-century notions adhere to it. The bleak economy, the urgency to upkeep and my subtle anti-capitalist infatuations, all add up to an ill-defined “happy”.

My peers drool over new cars and cryptocurrencies. Their eccentric coffees at exotic diners acknowledge their reservations of thoughts. Capital drives society. Regardless of its origins, money garners more attention and acceptance than any other arbitrary thing. I, with a handful of belongings, have no right to complain or object to this mass-accepted concept. I shouldn’t be happy.

Should it not account for entertainment, broken and out of breath, artists are discarded right away at the first hints of stagnancy. I cannot blame them, for what would be the difference among us otherwise? I understand their judgments thoroughly.

Modern artists are brands. They garner style and aesthetics, and their consistent digital appeal is awe-inspiring, while I shatter at the first sight of attention.

I dress like a homeless person. A skinny futon graces my room, along with a blanket that I have held on to for a decade, a small bedside table erring away with a load of books and scribbled papers, and a clumsy old rucksack that holds my closet is all the garnishing in this bare concrete room. Other than that, two guitars, a pair of running shoes with a toe size hole in the left one and a very uncomfortable pair of boots lay facing one wall.

I don’t own a car or a house, nor do I prosper from any financial investments or major savings; last year has been catastrophic. How dare I expect people to answer their choices and argue the judgement of me?

I am happy. Regardless of being an anomaly in the books, I am a content human being.

I sleep like a baby on my thin bleak futon while a book epitomizes entertainment for me. Announcing trivial joy and peace through such meagre frugality contrasts their well-reserved and polished ideas of the modern human.

“Everybody sells some parts of their body. Some sell their time while others trade in skills; isn’t that what everybody has always done? Isn’t this the way of the man?”

To involve oneself in a discussion where you are presented to define and eventually defend your ideas and morals, never to be understood and accepted, is abhorrent and maleficent to a soul. I refrain.

The more new year novelties I see and read, the more shrouded I crumble under their weight. These intra-personal trials of justifications and elaborations seep deep under my skin. What is my new year’s resolution? What changes do I seek? Am I truly content? If not that, am I at peace?

The point is not to refine the question, but to seek the reason we look for such questions. Of course, self-analysis and criticism are vital, but this assessment feels false. The mutual assessment of happiness and the social value of an individual asks me to bow down to such fiction. It demands that I chop off the accessions of thought, round the randomness, generate a structure and be definable enough for one of their boxes. Happiness once again can just be deducted by a sample survey template.

Sometimes you don’t fit into certain categories of identity, gender or social hierarchy. Biases and concepts from the past still haunt us decades later. I try but I could never function like a machine.

I daydream, my routines are non-existent, I eat unhealthily, and my obsessive tendencies and abrupt mental shutdowns when things go south drive my presence. I come unedited, uncensored, and unrestricted; I guess I am too much in love with the flow and randomness of life. Objectively speaking, these are normal human discrepancies, but they act as specific character traits of an individual like me and so many more.

According to them and their routines, I need a few changes; some desperate ones at once, though. Well, let’s grant this thought an extension.

Am I okay with my cheap, broken phone? It serves its purpose, the battery life is adequate, it is fast enough; dependable. I don’t think I need a new one. What about my room, then? The dire lack of furnishing is embarrassing. I don’t use a table and chair; I sit down to work. The physical space should serve you a function, it shouldn’t be a subject of what we accept and what the decoration ethics of the century dictate. I am no fan of avocados or fancy chips either; I am alright with daal chaawal. Darn it, I love traditional Indian food. Sadly, brands and their creative adverts could never lure me in, while cheap pairs of thrift store shirts serve me very well.

It is critical to keep up with ideas and news, but it is ludicrous to drive yourself crazy because you want an apartment with a swimming pool. Things that hold temporary involvement shouldn’t claim power over you. 

I keep reminding myself of the grand picture – the capacity to observe and iterate what I perceive through art, never driving prejudice or decision, and never a subject of trends or relevancy. Jumping onto the latest tech phenomenon wagon just out of fear of missing or because everyone is doing so is superfluous. I should guard this objectivism intact.

People run at their own pace. The concept that life is a race, and your choices are already defined, is not only delusional but also a sadist gesture – a poor joke cracked at the expense of people who are a little late and/or don’t fit in the system. Some people live humbly while others shove their ideas of success and privilege with cars and shoes in your face. Passion drives some, while others are merely a victim of traumas and subsequent insecurities.

All those texts and social media narrations serve nothing more than a reminder – that if it comes from within, you need no reminders.

I concur with two probable lessons that I shall adore for this next Gregorian New Year.

• The ability to look at me objectively, and
• To stop comparing myself with others

“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will elude, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

Henry David Thoreau.

The ideals of New Year’s wishes and other celebratory dates feel redundant to me. But for the sake of diction, I wish you a very happy New Year with all of my heart. I hope it brings the change you envision. But more than that, I hope this serves as a reminder that you are enough; that you should sit back and take a long unbiased look at yourself. With no comparison against anyone, dearly withholding your immense individuality and nuances of your being, weigh yourself against yourself only.

Be critical, be brutal, but never judge.

Trying to be somebody else is a waste of the person you are. Trends and social conventions shall change. They always have. But what stay true and extends time and culture are your virtues and your absolute ability to reason, and also, reason with logic.

Happiness, contention and peace are devoid of materialism; the pursuit of more is a spectacular delusion; seeking acknowledgement through social media is a sign of mental fatigue and an identity issue; many more such realisations dawn after tonight.

At peace, I can officially close my notebook and bury myself under my warm cosy blanket and hope that my dreams, however implausible or abstract, never cease to exist.

Saby Singh
31 December, 2021

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This essay was written in 2021. I reflect over how I felt two years back to now, it is yet another defining moment. We should write as often and as much as we can.

Saby Singh