When I told my friends about my recent struggles, it seemed like they tried hard not to smile at my first world problem- I’m so good at everything that I can’t make up my mind about what I want to do.

My problem is that I’m looking for happines. Mum said I think too much. I laughed, but I think she could be right.

Freedom, safety, control, happiness, feeling good enough, feeling at peace - all the wild gooses we keep chasing. But if we look hard enough, we’d find that these things can’t be found in the world, because they only exist as concepts in our minds.

I have never felt good enough, so I keep going down deeper and faster into the dark alley of self-improvement. I kept thinking I’d be happier if I got better. But there’ll never be a moment where I find no room of improvement in any of my persuits.

Safety is just an idea, and like hygiene, everybody’s got different ideas of it. Good enough is an opinion. Freedom, control, and peace are all concepts. They are pure and beautiful. Great people have spent lifetimes chasing them. We can chase them too. But which ones do I want though?

There’s no permanent state of happiness, nor permanent state of doom. There is only experiencing. Everything is transitory.

When we worry about the future or wish things were different, we are unhappy. If we lived every moment worrying, that’s a whole life of being unhappy. If we lived every moment creating love and joy, that’s a lifetime of happiness. Calculus?

Busy chasing is a way of living. Never enough. The frown, the jerkiness, the sore eyes, the stiff neck, the tight shoulders. I can’t smile because my body feels so uptight. I need to let it out. How? Walking, breathing, running, jumping, kicking, singing, writing, hugging, comforting, laughing, crying, violent shaking. I heard I needed to deal with the stress before I have the energy to sort out the stressors.

One thing I know, chasing while being unhappy is not worth it.

But when I tell strangers about what I do, I see sparkles in their eyes. I like that about chasing dreams. We can be driven by love, or fears, or a combination of them. We can be driven by love alone. Then we can still be chasing, but it’s a happy life.

• meditation
• happiness