The Settlement

5 years back, millennials such as myself went in search for the elusive "happiness".

Books were written about it, devising ways in which we would maintain this illusory euphoria as a constant.

There were rumours that the key was to be positive around every bend. Conversely there were books trashing constant positivity, claiming it to be artificial and causing emotional strain.

There were youtube videos uploaded on gratitude. Ah, perhaps gratitude was the secret.

5 years later, millennials such as myself have given up on the elusive "happiness".

We have started claiming that there really is no such thing: what we could be, is simply fascinated, turning us curious and passionate, but which would leave us equally disappointed when such fascination met its match in failure.

Just like that in a matter of years, our "happiness" went back to being a simple word existing in a dictionary which we used time to time when we were joyful and which we stopped expecting not only in our moments of sorrow but also in our everyday indifference.

Even so, the goal for which our very pursuit for "happiness" began remained unachieved. We were constantly dissatisfied. It was difficult to maintain a certain level of stability with the kind of "unhappiness" we harboured day after day as we droned on and on like money-churning robots attempting only to maintain survival.

We took in the constant criticism of the generation that had gone before us; telling us we were spoilt, self-entitled, ungrateful, impatient, unstable, non-persistent, ever-changing, fickle, and the likes. Whilst we took them in, the solution remained undiscovered.

We had grown up in a different generation, perhaps more privileged. Being criticized was no different than stating a fact which mind you, we had long known, whilst we lived punished for our participation in this society which no longer saw eye to eye with settling for unhappiness.

There remained to be no solution.

So we threaded the deep waters on our own, dropping out of work for something clearer, leaving our jobs for entrepreneurship where we could invest our "wealth" (that which they claimed we had) to finally, reap the seeds we had sown and where we lived flexibly and without curtailment.

Was this the only possible way forward? Did the bitter refusal to recognise the power of evolution lie at the root of social discord?

Till this day we pondered on whether we were happy, whether it were simply a goddamn word; whether it was not to be expected; whether we were meant to have lived joyous childhoods only to discard them upon adulthood, to join our previous generation in this sombre "settlement" we call reality.

For My Partner

When you smother me, I want my space.
When you pick me up, I want the subway.

When I throw a fit, you let it be.
When I want a fight, you fight for me.

I want turbulence and catastrophes,
You give me all the steady seas.

I want reckless, no inhibitions!
You come with airbags, this contradiction!

Maybe there's a reason,
We are so smooth.

Maybe it's telling,
That we never argue.

I want daisies and wildflowers, in a vast field,
You give me grass, it feeds the cow.

All that pomp can feed a dream,
Yet but for that grass, the cow won't live.

Last night I dreamt i married you, I was so scared!
Tonight I think maybe, I never want to leave.

I always doubt, I always falter.
Your feet are planted, are you a statue?

I'll always stumble, into my bubble.
I'll throw my daggers, & mean words mumble.

I revel here, in my own world.
A special havoc, this putrid hellhole.

Yet it is true,
in this time, in this place,

That I do,
I do love you.