Whine and dyin'?

So I was on the treadmill in my gym flipping TV channels when I paused at Diana Ser's show 'Get Rea!'. (No, it's not a typo, the word actually has an exclamation mark instead of an 'l'.) There are two reasons why I paused. Diana Ser is my super senior at NTU. Years ago, she'd done the same master's course that I am doing now. Though I have never met her, the professors often speak of her fondly, and her success is an inspiration to all of us. Secondly, Get Rea! is one of the very few shows worth watching on Singapore TV.

On the show, she was talking about the recent results from the Happy Planet Index, that ranked Singapore very low in the list of the 178 nations in the happiness index. Among the Asian nations, Singapore was ranked lowest at 131. (India, by the way, is at 62.)

Of course, how one can measure happiness in terms of numbers and ranks is subject to debate. You can't have a common one-size-fits-all test to measure happiness across so many different countries. More fundamentally, can happiness really be measured? Which is why I liked Diana Ser's show because she was not analysing the numbers in the happiness index. She was collating her own little set of results - going to people and asking them how they defined happiness and whether they would consider themselves to be happy.

One of the local RJs was a guest on the show, and she said something so interesting that I have been thinking about it for days now. I can't remember her exact words, but she said something to the effect that she often feels pressured into being unhappy because that's what's expected of her when someone asks her how she is.

The amount of truth in what she said is amazing.

The fact is - we're all screwed. Waat lagi hui hai sabki. In one way or the other, we all have our problems. Problems which we can't even categorise as 'big' or 'small' because they're all relative. What you consider as a small problem could be a big problem for me and vice versa. There is no one in the world who lives his life without facing a single problem.

So is it that complaing about our problems brings us together? Binds us in the same thread? Makes us like one another?

But at what cost?

Taking into account all kinds of views, I think we can all reach a unanimous conclusion. That being happy is better than being unhappy. I doubt if there is anyone who will say the reverse. Being happy is good for our home, heart, health and beyond. So why this indignation to be happy?

Is it that the person who's asking us how we are is so unhappy himself/herself that we push all our happiness into the background and pull forth our miseries just to connect with him/her? Or is it that we're competing on extremities of feelings - "You think you're unhappy, look at me!"? Or is it our traditional way of thinking that if we flaunt our happiness too much, nazar lag jayegi - it would be jinxed?

A few days ago, I was having lunch with my colleagues when one of them asked, "Since when has X been in the company?" (X is a colleague in the production department.)

"Since forever." I answered.

It's true. She's been here since for ages now, people have come and gone (textbook publishing in Singapore has one of the highest employee turnover rates, mainly due to the low pay and high stress), and she's still here sturdy as a rock. And the best part is that she's always cheerful. She's always smiling and laughing. Like a colleague mentioned, "Even when she's stressed and yelling, she's kinda cheerful." And it's true.

That statement stayed in my head the whole day. The fact that I was once exactly like that made me very restless. A few years ago, perhaps I was happier than I am now. The low pay and stress did not bother me. I was always cheerful, and I never had a complaint about anything. Today, even though I'm happy with my relationships, my job, my life, but sometimes I feel like one's gotta have some unhappiness somewhere to fit into this world, to relate with souls who seem happy being unhappy. And so in spite of the fact that I totally love my job, once in a while I find myself complaining about salary and stress. And admiring X.

Why are we content just admiring the kind of people that we very easily can be ourselves?

A couple of weeks ago, when I was appraising one of my editors, he mentioned that sometimes he gets sucked into a tornado of negativity. I know what he was talking about. I have myself experienced one of the aspects of the tornado he mentioned - lunchtime conversations, which invariably turn into bitching-about-the-company sessions. If you can't participate in that, you feel left out, on your own.

It saddened me. Has complaining become second nature to us? Do we find comfort in the fact that we're all screwed, some way or the other? Do we not allow happy people into our exclusive whiners club? Do we find some kinda sick joy out of making our lives seem pathetic and pitiable? Have we become okay with the idea of our epitaph reading "Here lies someone who whined and died."?

Maybe it's an Asian value. If someone comes to us and says, "My boss is a moron who gets double my salary for doing half my work!" we can't say, "Oh come on, he's not that bad!" or "Oh, my boss is the best! He inspires me and rewards me beyond my expectations." What we do is come up with something that will serve as an adequate reply that will validate the other person's feelings, such as "I can understand your situation. My boss is fine, but my colleagues are so bitchy and manipulative... and the salary is so low... and the work is so stressful..." blah blah. So just to supply a fitting reply, we actually hunt for something negative to talk about.

Agreed that sometimes complaining can be therapeutic. It can serve as a channel to vent our negative thoughts and give us peace of mind, help us identify the problem areas in our lives. It can be an ice-breaker for when you first meet someone and express the negativity you share about something or someone. It can help us connect to our friends. Once in a while, we all do want to sit down and vent it all out. We have little things in our lives we are not happy about, and talking about it with people around us is good.

But what if we're constantly complaining about the same old things, without doing anything about them? What if our complaining is catching on, and making whiners out of others too? What if it's become something of a daily routine - like brushing our teeth - so ingrained into our daily lives that we could do it in our sleep? Perhaps we need to do a little check - keep count of how many times we whine about the same damn thing? Or what percentage of our conversations constitutes whining?

The truth of the matter is that all the things that we whine about - a bad job, a bad relationship, a breaking marriage - are direct or indirect results of our own decisions. So instead of waking up and complaining about the same damn thing every day and believing that the world is out to get us, all we need to do is make a decision. Make a change. Quit that job, break up the relationship, get a divorce, instead of making yourself and others around you unhappy.

It's simple - quit or quit whining.

Seasons come and go, fashions change, trends change. Things go out of style. It becomes the 'in' thing to dislike a movie everyone liked and so on. But when did this happen exactly - this switch from 'It's hip to be happy!' to 'It's hip to be unhappy!'? And what the hell were we doing when it happened?

And is it not possible to turn things around? Instead of people connecting to each other because they're all unhappy about something or the other, is it not possible to connect to each other because we're all happy about something or the other?