By: Daniel Salcedo Rubio, Features Editor
Content warning: mentions of disordered eating and harmful behaviour.
Happiness is such an elusive concept; we look for it in every corner only to realize it’s still far away. We keep thinking we will eventually find it after some great achievement or in the company of someone else. I’m only 28 years old, and I feel I’m nowhere close to having any meaningful wisdom. For the past couple of years, I’ve lived in a continuous state of autopilot. Even before the pandemic started, I felt my life was becoming monotonous. I was already shutting down my awareness — I was just performing the same tasks and activities on the same days, every week, every month. Don’t get me wrong, I think finding a routine that works for your lifestyle is an essential part of finding a balance between leisure and responsibility, but moving through time without awareness of either removes all the obligations and enjoyment of both.
I’m not entirely sure how it all started, but in hindsight, I realize I was moving through life without any notion of awareness during the last year of my undergrad degree some five years ago (yikes). I had just come back from studying abroad, where every day truly felt like it could have been a short novel on its own. I was ready to apply that same motivation for life back in my own city, but I just couldn’t. I got extremely anxious about life after graduation. I started looking for a job in my field and had to navigate through an ocean of rejection, with each new failed interview feeling like a bigger wave of disappointment than the previous one — I thought I was going to drown. One day I got it: a great job with great pay in my field, and I thought I could finally breathe again, but the air didn’t last long — a month later I was back to the beginning. I kept looking for the next big thing to bring me joy: the next promotion, the next event, my next achievement, and soon after I finally got them, I would find myself back at the bottom of the ocean.
I was dissatisfied with my life despite having everything one could need. I had a great job with pay well above the average for my age bracket, caring friends, a great relationship with a wonderful person, and most importantly, I had a place to sleep and a full pantry. I didn’t go to a psychologist; I was afraid and I grew up in an environment where the stigma surrounding mental health was always present. I kept thinking, “you just need this one more thing, then your life will be better.” My eyes were always on the goal, but my mind was never in the present. I just kept moving through life on autopilot, jumping from tiny bits to tiny bits of awareness and enjoyment. One day I got a promotion, six months later I got accepted into SFU, and six months after that I was moving my entire life to Canada. Don’t get me wrong, I worked for these achievements, they’ve brought joy into my life and I’m proud and grateful for them — but I don’t remember enjoyment in between them. It wasn’t until I moved to Canada that I truly felt something was wrong. This had been a dream in the making for more than a decade; yet, my first few months here were filled with anxiety and confusion. “I made it!” I repeated to myself day after day, but I still found myself barely eating and barely going outside my room in residence. I was confused. This had been the big achievement that I had been working so hard for, it was the ultimate goalpost, the surface I had been trying to reach with all my strength — I wasn’t sad nor happy, I just felt . . . nothing.
I decided I needed to take a step back, to chill the fuck out. Of course, that’s easier said than done when living in one of North America’s most expensive cities with an income that wasn’t enough to sustain me long-term. I had also just started a new degree — it seemed like the worst time for me to chill. There was so much to do, and so many new things to achieve. And there I was again, setting new objectives for myself, setting my happiness in goals yet to achieve, setting myself up for failure — until one catalytic moment happened. One goal I had been looking forward to and that felt so close was torn into pieces, never to be achieved. I was broken, I moved from barely eating to just not eating at all for days, from barely going out to literally not leaving my room once in an entire week. I took a step back; not by choice, but by force.
Thankfully I didn’t stay long in that dark place. I gathered myself slowly, built myself back up, and started to look for happiness wherever I could find it. A year ago, a friend gifted me a book called The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down and while I haven’t really read it, the title kept bouncing around my head, telling me, “you need to slow down, you need to appreciate the things around you.” So, I made the conscious effort of being aware of what I did and what was happening around me. I would try to no longer play music or something on Netflix just to get background noise. I would instead stop and try to focus and enjoy one thing at a time.
I started going outside, walking through the trails of Burnaby Mountain just to hear the leaves rattle with the wind, and I would wake up early just to listen to the noise of cargo ships in the distance. I decided to romanticize my life — I imagined myself as a character in a Studio Ghibli movie, finding magic and joy in doing the most mundane things. Taking the Expo Line suddenly felt like being on the Sea Railway of Spirited Away. I found joy by slowing down and being grateful for the tiny things that make my life special, and I even started a daily gratitude journal.
I wrote every other day what I was grateful for, from tiny things like my technological gadgets to more complex things like relationships with my friends. I must admit that I felt silly writing about why I was grateful for the change of seasons and it was kinda hard to find things to be grateful, but now I genuinely appreciate these things I used to take for granted. But don’t assume that I’m fooling myself, I’m well aware that the anxiety will likely come back. I’m still setting goals for my future — I even started 2023 with a list of 28 things to do before turning 29 — but now, my happiness isn’t solely bound to them.
I want to finish by saying that I’m truly happy, I’m enjoying the present while still looking forward to the future. I’m still switching to autopilot, but I’m no longer jumping between tiny bits of happiness; instead, I’m jumping between tiny moments of autopilot. I started going to counselling because I know my Studio Ghibli trick will not last forever, but I will still enjoy it while it does. If there’s one piece of advice I could give you, it’s not to wait until you’re broken into pieces. If you need help, look for it or ask for it. SFU Health & Counselling is open for you and British Columbia also has a list of resources you can access when needed. Take care of yourself, for yourself.
