SGGP
In my childhood, every time my mother went to the market, I would be restless at home, anxiously waiting for her to come back.
Sometimes, just a lollipop, a honey donut, or a packet of sticky rice would make us kids overjoyed, running around the yard with eyes sparkling with overflowing happiness.
As a child, I was always so excited about Tet (Vietnamese New Year), counting down the days until the calendar was worn out. At school, I just wished time would fly by so I could have a holiday. Every Tet, my mother would take me to the market to buy new clothes and shoes, which I cherished and took care of. During Tet, I would show them off to everyone in the neighborhood.
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Every summer afternoon, we'd trade a pair of worn-out sandals for an ice cream or some taffy, and we'd all gather around to eat, cheering and shouting with delight. I remember every afternoon, in the vast rice fields, we'd all get together to catch grasshoppers, crickets, fish, and crabs, then play spinning tops, hopscotch, jump rope, and hide-and-seek. Our shouts, laughter, and chatter echoed across the fields. Remembering those childhood days, happiness was so incredibly simple.
Then we grew up, our parents grew older, life became more comfortable, we could buy expensive delicacies, beautiful clothes or shoes. But we could never recapture the excitement and happiness we felt as children. Could it be that the busy life with its abundance of conveniences makes us feel this way? Could it be that the definition of happiness changes as we get older?
Some argue that it's due to individual expectations; the higher the expectations, the lower the chances of achieving happiness. We are now dependent on social media, where friends and acquaintances are always "top-notch," eating delicious food, checking in at luxurious places, doing extraordinary things... making us feel inadequate and worthless. Our expectations are so heavily influenced by the achievements of others that we feel like failures. We always feel deprived, needing to buy more, to have more... and ultimately, we feel unhappy because we can't "buy the whole world ."
Many young people today are different from us back then; they think more about finding happiness. But when we think about what to do to make ourselves happy, it becomes even harder to achieve it because the time spent contemplating happiness, fundamentally, doesn't make us happier. In a life where everyone is struggling with the pursuit of material things and money, few people find happiness anymore.
Ultimately, happiness is a state of mind, and therefore it can only be found within oneself, that is, within each individual. Due to changes in the social environment, a segment of today's youth increasingly seeks happiness through external factors (eating well, dressing well, fame, traveling the world, dating a hot guy or hot girl, etc.) instead of focusing on pure spiritual values, making it more difficult for them to achieve true happiness.
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