Denounce the world with its worldly pleasures, I think not

I think 'worldly pleasures' = sanity so I would like to keep my sanity tyvm. It's kinda ironic that my social life only picked up in J2 with the debators and stuff.

Today, I listened to Bon Iver on the bus home. I wouldn't romanticize the feeling that crept up on me as I approached my stop (I have a tendency to do so, I know) It was plain but so very simple. The quiet melancholy echoed in my ear and it was raining, and I was quietly contented. It was that simple. I realized it doesn't take much for us to be happy but we are ambitious beings, and therefore easily discontented when we fall short of our expectations to succeed.

If I don't make it to Duke or the US, or I don't get a scholarship, I believe that there are many things that I can be quietly contented with. It may be a breakfast stacked with pancakes with lovely companionship, visitation to museums, having a Friday evening chat with a friend, even seeing small successes mushrooming in the environmental arena in Singapore..

Happiness doesn't have to elude us. It's the comparison that causes us to fall from this state of rest and contentment so easily. I think that Duke will make me happy, I want to see Lyonel Feininger in moma, and the successes seem so insignificant in light of the direction climate negotiations are taking.

It's so easily to get discouraged, I know and I have seem how this premise has caused many people to draw different conclusions for themselves, spiralling into existentialism at times (Including myself a few months back and here and there)

But that's not a conclusion I want to draw for myself. This resonates with me "For we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out of it." 1 Timothy 6:7. In my mind's eye, I see this image of a a soul gently entering the world, and leaving just the littlest of an imprint, before floating out. I think that's all of us. Yes, I want to change the world but I don't want to be discouraged with this image. I somehow feel humbled with the insignificance bestowed and contained within me, in reverence of the larger scheme of things out there.

At the most elemental sense, I want to be the best person I can be and to help the world with my fullest capacity. I don't think more can be asked from me and if it is, I simply cannot provide it.Just striving to be a better person everyday, with myself of the yesterday as the benchmark.