Hector

I watched Hector and the Search for Happiness tonight and cried my eyes out (as always?). It's totally underrated on IMDB. I gave it a 10. I even think is a much better movie than Boyhood.

Here are the 15 keys to happiness:
1. Making comparisons can spoil your happiness.
2. A lot of people think happiness is being rich or important.
3. Many people see happiness only in their future.
4. Happiness could be the freedom to love more than one woman at the same time.
5. Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.
6. Avoiding unhappiness is not the road to happiness.
7. Does the person you're with predominately bring you a) up or b) down?
8. Happiness is answering your calling.
9. Happiness is being loved for who you are.
10. Sweet potato stew!
11. Fear is an impediment to happiness.
12. Happiness is feeling completely alive.
13. Happiness is knowing how to celebrate.
14. Listening is loving.
15. Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

These 15 points are very intriguing and I agree with everyone of them except for #4. Let me rephrase--I think I've ever experienced everyone of them but I'm not so sure about #4. When I'm in love with someone, I know I have the freedom to love someone else but I didn't need that freedom because I'm dedicated and committed. #4 is very tricky; don't we all have the freedom to love who/what we want at the same time? A legal document, a wedding vow, or persuasion of any sort isn't able to change how we feel. We are never convinced to love someone; it just happens naturally. Loving multiple people at the same time? I still feel quite confused about this. I can have a crush on different guys at the same time. OK, if I really have to recall my past love life, I have to say I've never stopped loving Ken over the past few years, even when I was dating other guys, even when I was having a crush on other guys. Around this time last year, I was dating Michael and I loved him. At one point I got a text message from Ken asking me how I was and I replied: I'm feeling really happy and content with my life now and I'm tired of loving you. What I really meant was: I still love you but I feel so tired keeping doing so.

Let's just say I have the freedom to love more than one man at a time, but does that mean happiness to me? No. I don't think so. I wish I'd be loving only one man at a time for the rest of my life. I wish there was no need for me to love another man because we're committed to each other and we vow to work on the rest of our lives together. I wish I could love no one else but Ken, but that would be suicidal because he doesn't love me. He doesn't even think of me. So I can't love only him. I need to love someone else and perhaps stopping my love for him one day in order to love someone else fully so I can keep living and be happy. #4 is tricky; I don't like it, and I don't fully agree with it.

Then it's nostalgia. Yes, everything I think about me and Ken is nostalgia, which is not what it used to be. But I can't help it. It's been so long since I silently sat in the same room with a man feeling absolutely happy and content with the presence of each other. Of course I miss his smile, his stupid jokes and teasing, and his nervousness. I miss our conversations, and how he made me laugh. I don't know how to deal with a life where everything we had is all gone.

Today was a weird day. I had a bad start before I woke up. I read some frustrating emails from a bed & breakfast that I booked for our family trip in a week. I was 10 mins late to work, which had never happened before. I made a mistake in class. After class, an 18-year-old student cried to me because she was frustrated with the workload we had and I had to hug her and comfort her (not that I didn't want to do those things). My watch stopped running. Booking the train tickets in the last minute was so troubling and exhausting and my brain is consumed from trying to figure out the logistics for our trip.

All of those made me wanna snap, and break down like Hector did at the beginning of the movie. My job is to let all my students be themselves and feel happy, but I don't get to be myself. I'm losing that balance where I put myself first and let things fall into place. I've been working too hard lately trying to make everything work, everyone happy. This doesn't work and I need to find myself again.

The scan of Hector's brain made me cry really badly. Happiness is everything; there's no way to feel happy all the time and feel nothing but happy. The emotions are always intertwined, like I once wrote. I remember writing here that I cry out of both happiness and sadness. I feel bittersweet of things. Things can make me feel happy and sad at the same time, and we can't explain why. Every part of the brain can be triggered at the same time. That's why "warriors" like Hector or myself used to spend our life blocking out all the emotions in order to be "normal", to maintain a career, fit in the world. If we didn't block out all those emotions, we'd be in a chaotic state all the time and it'd be difficult for people to like us.

I need to sleep now. Will work further on these 15 points.