La Vie En Rose

I decided to bring this topic up for some reasons that might be too long to be elaborated. So, let me just keep it short. La vie en rose, a French phrase that could be translated to "life through pink tinted glasses", depicts a state of bliss where everything appears cheerful, to the person who wears the glasses, obviously. And in this case, I want it to be me because I have wasted almost my entire life whining about the things I couldn't change. So this time, allow me to sprinkle a pinch of positivism to neutralise all the negative ingredients on a giant plate called life.

It's beautiful to remind each other that when we change the way we look at things, that's how the things we look at change.

It's easy to be happy when everything in life goes well. Anyway, life itself is a constant journey of discovery. Although it's hard to accept, the journey isn't always pretty. It includes suffering, failure, doubts and most of the time, fear. It's full of a big fat mess of heartbreaks and betrayals, hence making us believe that happiness is abstract. Oh yes, it is indeed abstract.

Nonetheless, it's just miraculous to find that it's not entirely abstract since happiness depends on the way we look at things.

Let's take an example of how I spent more than two years regretting my decision of coming back to this town. I hated every part of it: the culture, where the youngsters have to be completely submissive; the traffic where hundreds of cars are stuck in the middle of intersection; and even the people, who define rudeness as some kind of achievement. How I wished I had been clever enough to make judgement for myself. How I wished I had never stepped on this forest full of "wild animals". How I wished I had been wiser.

Apart from those regrets, there's this one remorse of mine coming up later: I wished I had been seeing things differently.

For almost two years, I let myself immerse in my own scepticism. I was so frightened that I would change myself into one of those people I hated, so I drew back and stopped giving myself a shot. But slowly, as I met new great people in Toastmasters, I realised that I had been seeing things in a misguided way.

So I tried to put on those rose-tinted glasses and change the way I see things. Inevitably, a vague shape of happiness forms on that plate, leaving me in an awe. Happiness is no longer abstract for me, it is just a matter of perspective.

I no longer suffer and deny that I should have been in a better place, instead I accepted the reality that I had to move on, live and love my life to the fullest despite the pain, which eventually makes me feel much, much alive.

Just like me, I hope you find joy amidst your broken days. I hope that your heart collects itself whenever it gets broken and learns to love again. I hope you can see life through rose-tinted glasses.

La Vie En Rose.

-ASA-