A personal reflection on peace, contentment, and letting go.
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According to the Indonesian Dictionary (KBBI), happiness is defined as a feeling of joy and tranquility, or a state of mind and emotion that experiences pleasure and inner peace, both physically and mentally, free from things that cause distress. It includes contentment and inner calm, not just fleeting moments of joy.
The question is: how do we actually reach that state of happiness?
Back then, I believed that happiness was something I had to prove to other people. I thought that if I could show an “ideal” life through other people’s standards, it meant I had succeeded. Sounds strange, right? But that was exactly how it played out in real life.
That mindset led me to a turning point where I finally realized:
Oh… I’ve been living my life for other people all this time.
Once again, I found myself becoming a people pleaser, this time even in the pursuit of my own happiness.
What’s ironic is that I only became aware of this when I turned 23. Which means, yeah… it took me quite a while. But that’s life, I guess. There will always be moments when we only understand something after we’ve learned and lived through it ourselves.
I learned that happiness isn’t about other people thinking that we’re happy. It’s about no longer needing other people’s validation to feel happy. Simply put, we’re happy when we ourselves are aware that we are happy.
Sounds confusing, I know, but I’ll try to break it down in this piece.
Think about school, back when we were kids. The goal of going to school was simple: to study, get good grades, and eventually live a comfortable life. That was the mindset passed down by previous generations. I remember feeling heavy and unmotivated every time I had to go to school, as if a huge rock was pressing down on my body, draining all my excitement before the day even started. School didn’t make me feel happy. Even though the laziness would disappear once I got there, I rarely felt genuinely enthusiastic about starting the day.
At the time, I thought I was unhappy.
But looking back now, I realize I wasn’t unhappy, I was just hiding behind the word lazy and misinterpreting it as unhappiness.
So maybe it’s not that we aren’t “happy” but that we often misunderstand what happiness actually is.
In the age of social media, happiness is often measured by material things. Travelling abroad every year and filling Instagram feeds with colorful memories. Eating well every day without worrying about your bank balance. Posting daily work-life updates in cozy offices that make life look productive and put-together. The definitions of “happiness” come in many forms now.
And here’s the irony: when someone chooses to live low-profile and doesn’t show their life to the world, they’re often seen as unhappy.
But are people who upload their lives every day on social media definitely happy?
Not necessarily.
They’re simply perceived as “happy” through other people’s judgments.
That’s why happiness feels incredibly biased in this era.
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.
In fact, I often find that people who live quietly tend to be happier than those who constantly update their lives online. Why? Because they’re able to experience genuine happiness without chasing validation from others. Does that mean people who are active on social media are wrong? Not at all. Some of them post as a way of honoring themselves after achieving things they’ve worked hard for.
Neither is wrong.
What is wrong is when standards of happiness turn people into judges of other people’s lives.
I started to realize that this era was actually making me unhappy. I felt small when, at this age, my life still looked “ordinary,” while everyone around me was travelling abroad and achieving milestone after milestone. I felt like a failure for switching careers when people my age already seemed to have everything figured out. I shrank every time I met people whose lives looked more “successful” than mine.
Until I reached a point where I realized: none of that is the standard for a happy life.
I no longer care about statements that say happiness means having hundreds of millions in savings or buying anything without a second thought. I no longer believe that happiness means working yourself to exhaustion so that someday, when you’re old, you can finally live comfortably. I’m not giving up, I’ve just found a different definition of happiness.
And my way of seeing other people has changed too.
Because it turns out, people with a lot of money aren’t necessarily that happy either.
At the end of the day, this is just the world.
Once again, it is... just... world, after all.
So yes, KBBI is right. Happiness includes contentment and inner peace, not just momentary joy.
Happiness, for me, is feeling calm and at peace, and realizing that the blessings I’ve received up until today are already more than enough. I no longer measure my happiness against other people’s achievements. I’ve stopped blaming myself for not being “as good” as others. Because I know that sometimes my heart wants what other people have, not because I truly need it, but because I want to be seen as someone who is living a happy life. And even if I had all of that, it doesn’t mean I’d actually feel happy.
This discussion about happiness will never truly end. I just want anyone who reads this to realize that happiness can’t be measured by material things. Trust me, happiness isn’t just about money. Sometimes it’s about seeing your parents stay healthy. Sometimes it’s about waking up without your head being filled with thoughts of debt. And sometimes, it’s about an inner peace that money will never be able to buy.
May you find happiness in ways that don’t require being seen.⭐
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