There’s a word in Korean called 소확행 (so-hwak-haeng). It means “small but certain happiness,” and it refers to finding joy in the mundane. The term was originally coined by Haruki Murakami in his essay titled Afternoon in the Islets of Langerhans, where he describes a small piece of happiness as “Eating a freshly-baked loaf of bread with one’s hands, seeing neatly folded underwear in a drawer, wearing a new shirt that smells like clean cotton and letting a cat enter into a bed with a rustling sound.”
I’ve been thinking about finding joy in everyday life for a while now, and I’ve traced this back to the start of the pandemic. I had walked over to a friend’s house to chat from a responsible six-foot distance. We were catching up and talking as usual when he asked me how I had been doing lately, and I answered truthfully that I was feeling happy. He was surprised about this, and to be fair, I understood his shock: we were in a global pandemic and had not been able to see our friends for months by then, had no plans for the incoming days of summer, and sat at home in our rooms every single day, for the most part. The thing is, I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. My everyday life at that point consisted of a routine of coffee with a book in the mornings, readings for class on my porch in the afternoons, and walks with my dog in the evenings. I found that I had been able to find joy in my daily life and the different pieces that it constituted. In a world without the pandemic, I would have been going out to public spaces and hanging out with friends; it definitely was a big change to come home from a bustling social scene in residence to my relatively quiet home in Richmond Hill. However, as the days progressed, I found that I actively looked forward to coffee and books and walks—they weren’t grandiose things, but they made me happy in my given circumstances.
It’s been a while since that conversation with my friend happened, and a lot of things have changed in my life. I’ve moved out to live in Toronto, school is now completely online, and I can’t remember the last time I sat down to eat in a restaurant. Throughout the fall semester, I lost that “small but certain happiness” attitude towards daily things that brought me joy over the summer. I dreaded doing readings which I had previously loved, slept without feeling refreshed, and could only think about how I couldn’t see a future for myself outside of school. I began to think that there was no real meaning to life; after all, if all I did for the rest of my life was put myself through school and then work until I retired, what could I possibly look forward to? How could I possibly be happy?
2021 is a frustrating time to be young. You’re worried about going through school or your job online, you’re dealing with the pressures of the pandemic—not only its impact on your health, but on restrictions for professional and career development as well—and you’re trapped in a capitalist culture that expects hobbies to be turned into a side hustle or small business to make money. How are we supposed to enjoy hobbies, such as knitting or baking, for what they are when we are constantly fed the idea that we need to be working no matter what, and that our hobbies are useless if we can’t make money off of them? Once you become aware of this underlying expectation, you become aware of the inherent capitalist nature of a “dream job.” We are told that we should become chefs if we like to cook, ballerinas if we like ballet, and artists if we like art. Our joys and passions are encouraged to be our labour. Of course, this isn’t to say that nobody finds their jobs enjoyable or fulfilling; there are plenty of people from all different fields in life who are satisfied with the work they do. It does, however, become a problem when all we can think about is turning every single one of our sources of joy into a form of paid labour, because that leads to burnout. It can be difficult to separate your job from your passion, but if you don’t, it may lead to you hating what you originally loved.
So, what do we do then? What’s next? Is there any way of finding purpose in our lives besides our academic lives or careers? If so, what does fulfillment look like? What does a satisfying life look like?
This past week, my roommates and I decided to watch Disney’s Soul (if you haven’t seen it already, there are spoilers to come). Funnily enough, our house had received a box filled to the brim with Soul merchandise from a giveaway contest a couple of weeks prior. Couple this with reviews stating that it was a phenomenal movie: we felt as though we were fated to give it a watch. True to all the praise it had been receiving, Soul turned out to be an incredible film—if not one of my personal favourites from Disney. It follows Joe Gardner, a jazz musician in New York City, whose greatest dream is to play piano in the famous Dorothea Williams Quartet. He manages to book the spot, but just before he is set to play his first show, he gets into an accident where his body and soul are separated. Joe’s soul goes to the Great Before, which is a place where soul counsellors prepare unborn souls for life on Earth by helping them find their spark. While he is there, he meets a soul named 22, who has yet to find her spark and refuses to go down to Earth. The rest of the movie follows Joe and 22’s journey to reunite Joe’s body on Earth with his soul.
One of the most emotional scenes in Soul is the scene where Joe, with his body and soul finally reunited, is in his apartment after having played a successful performance with the Dorothea Williams Quartet. He sits on the piano bench, sees a maple seed that 22 had picked up on her first day on Earth when her soul had accidentally inhabited his body, and thinks of 22 who is back in the Great Before. Joe begins to play the piano. The viewers see a montage of his life as the music swells: growing up with his father, riding a bike in a city park, walking along the beach with his mother. Then, the montage changes to 22’s short time on Earth, and we see her getting a haircut, eating pizza for the first time, and admiring the leaves on the trees. The music ends, and Joe sits on his piano bench having realized that, maybe, his grand dream of performing with the quartet wasn’t the only fulfilling moment in his life. He realizes that a spark in life isn’t a purpose, but rather, the readiness to live.
The message of Soul is a beautiful one. It tells us that our lives have merit. We don’t earn worthiness though our work, by being rich, or by being traditionally successful—we are worthy just by being alive. We deserve to enjoy the things that life has to offer for no other reason than simply being here on this Earth.
I’m very aware that I place a lot of my value on my grades, my work, and my future aspirations. Whenever I get a grade that I’m not happy with, I instantly think about how my future will now be ruined—which objectively isn’t true—and it sends me into a difficult spiral that I have trouble getting out of. With help, of course, I find that I’m able to get out of my head and recognize that I find other things in my life valuable outside of my identity as a student. For starters, I’m happy when I hang out with my roommates, when I prepare dinner, and when I listen to my favourite songs. I have learned over time that there are some hobbies that I truly enjoy for myself, not because I can turn a profit from them, but because I love them for what they are. There are so many different things that make me happy that are separate from my ideals of success and my ambitions. It’s important for me to remember that I have a life outside of my immediate anxieties that tunnel in on grades and job applications alone. So far, nearly 20 years of being alive has taught me that my value or worth depends on academic performance or milestones achieved in life. It is going to be difficult to unlearn this, but I am going to try—whether that be through self-reflection, professional help, or other avenues.
Over the winter break, I read a book called If Cats Disappeared from the World, which is about a man who wakes up one day and realizes he’s going to die very soon. There’s obviously more to the book than just that, but it raises the question what makes life worth living and what the meaning of life is. I couldn’t put it down, mainly because it brought me back to the idea that I followed during the summer of 2020 about finding joy in the mundane. I want to share a quote that really resonated with me, and it reads as follows:
“To live means to cry, to shout, to love, to do silly things, to feel sadness and joy; to laugh, even to experience horrible, frightening things. Beautiful songs, beautiful scenery, nausea, people singing, planes flying across the sky, the thundering hooves of horses, mouthwatering pancakes, the endless darkness of space, cowboys firing their pistols at dawn…And next to all the movies that play on a loop inside my head sit the images of friends, lovers, and family who were with me when I watched them. There are also the countless films that I’ve recorded in my own imagination — the memories that run through my head that are so beautiful, they bring tears to my eyes when they replay in my mind.”
I definitely don’t have the answers to questions about the meaning of life, but these are just some thoughts that I’ve been sitting with over the last year or so. With some time and patience, I hope to break out of the pattern of worrying about the future so much that I forget to live in the present. I want to spend time with the people I really want to spend time with, and say everything that needs to be said to the people who matter. I want to learn to love the tiniest things in my life that I’ve overlooked before and find joy in what I have right now. There is so much beauty around us and it can be seen if we choose to actively search for it. I believe this right now, but for times when I don’t, I want to remind myself that my purpose isn’t to be a student or lawyer or anything of that sort. My purpose is to grow and cry and feel and love. My purpose is just to live.
