Essay: No joy sparked
Posted on: July 9, 2018
Going through my Dad’s drawer in his room, I came across an unused Parker pen with several full ink refills accompanied it, all bundled together in a small plastic bag at the back of the drawer. Another day, I was curious to see what was in the cupboard under the sink in my Mom’s bathroom. I stumbled across piles and piles of old Vietnamese books of my Dad. Some still have cover wrapped in old newspaper or old calendar pages.
Looking at them, I suddenly feel so sad and I could not find the reason why, probably because they are objects that were never used properly and would possibly never been used anymore. They are still new, shiny, books that have pages still smell of ink. I suddenly think of Marie Kondo, the ‘master’ of tidying from Japan. In her book “The life-changing magic of tidying up”, she spoke about objects that ‘spark joy’ within us when we see them. These objects in my Mom’s drawer probably never spark joy. The Parker pen possibly sparked only once when it was bought. They have become part of a hoarding mess of life. Sad and lonely.
I then shift my thinking to the problem of buying excessively in people. Even I have the same problem sometimes. Will the objects really give us joy or it is just an impulse buy and we are once again a victim of the vicious marketing strategies of the seller? Do I really need this pen or I want it just because it looks nice in the display counter? I notice that when I am on holiday and I sit and study at a big but empty table, my ability to concentrate drastically improve. There are no laptop around to distract. There are no little decorating ornaments to fondle with my fingers. There are no annoying peripheral stimuli to irritate my working brain. If a place is de-cluttered, a mind living in it will also be.
Human beings are similar to unused objects in term of we start to feel useless and depressed. We see this in elderly. As they get older, their ability and quality of life decrease as they cannot do what they used to anymore. Some will find new things to do and adapt, some never will. It is a sad sight when seeing elderly migrants in foreign countries as they have a better life in another country, but they are never truly happy. They arrived to the new land with at a mismatch age, not young anymore to work, but old enough to start feeling the length of time on their shoulders. No more joy is sparked.
I then came across a small Vietnamese book amongst the pile with the title “Happiness: picked up”. The book has page after page with inspirational quote about happiness. I open a random page that read “Happiness is right inside ourselves”. These words spark joy. I picked up the book and decided to keep it to read. Finding happiness within us is a great quality to have as we are no longer depend on the outside factors. We are happiness. If we learn to make use of ourselves an if everyone could think this way, the world would have less depression.
(Complete 08/07/2018)
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