I know that ‘happiness’ is a very abstract concept. However, if someone asks, “What is your lifetime goal?” I will answer, “My happiness.” Consider; where did this idea start? From when did I begin to want happiness? My first memory about me caring about my happiness is when I was a middle school student. I was typing about the times and situations when I felt happiness on the note pad application of my smartphone. The situations were not so special. They were just regular parts of my daily life. Of course, some awesome situations were included, such as getting 100 points on my exams. Nevertheless, I thought it was more important to feel happy in my daily life. Since it is not easy to naturally feel consistently happy in our daily lives, I thought it was easy to miss small happy moments, so I tried to catch and hold them.

When I became a high school student, I found more moments when I felt happy. I met like-minded friends and experienced various things, and all these moments from high school remain as good memories. During that time, I recorded these happy moments on my note pad application and I did not need to try hard to recollect the situations when I felt happy. Maybe it has been romanticized, but I was really happy during that time. I was smiling, laughing, and enjoying times with my friends; I did not want this feeling of happiness to end.
 As a freshman at POSTECH, I experienced my limits, and it was harder to find happy moments. There were no familiar acquaintances, no familiar spots, and nobody to tell how much of a hard time I was going through. I thought I was alone. The fact that I could not find happy moments made me sadder, and I realized that I was obsessed with happiness and that made me even sadder. In the past, I just had tried to find small happy moments, but at that time, I was trying to be happy by constraint. As I looked back on my high school days I realized there were also difficult times, and I sometimes felt as if the world had ended. At that time, I just tried to recall happy moments, not trying to find them in difficult times. Realizing that, I began to try to stop being obsessed with happiness. 

I am trying to be happy though I am not happy. It sounds contradictory. This means if I am not happy, it is okay, and I do not need to try to find happy moments by putting pressure on myself to be happy. In other words, I started to feel happy from not trying to be happy. I started to just feel what I felt in the moment and tried to go back to the time when I felt happy with small moments in my daily life. Honestly, it is not easy, and I still say ‘I am happy’ over and over to myself unconsciously. Though, my heart is much lighter now, and I think I have become one step closer to my lifetime goal, my happiness. If I get stressed by trying to be happy, it does not match my lifetime goal. I finally have realized that.

Watching the POSTECH Bamboo forest page and other anonymous boards, many Postechians think they are not happy. I want you to know you are okay even though you may not feel happiness. Maybe it is a difficult time and you think you are alone, but you are not. You are the only one who can sincerely care about you, and there could be more friends around you than you might think. If you are reading this column and are my friend, senior, or junior and have a big or small problem, feel free to text me. Having lunch, tea, or a drink and a small talk may help you relax and ease your burdens. 

Now, I would like to change the title of this column.
Postechians, it is okay not to be happy.