How’s your day?

Good?

Why?

No, tell me why.

There is something about emotions that I have never quite understood. Nowadays, if you aren’t good, something’s wrong. Happiness has become the default emotion for everyone, if you aren’t good and smiling, you are automatically unhappy and sad. When you have food, and say that it’s ok it means the food is probably bad. When you get asked how your day at school was by your dad, and say that it was fine, it means you are probably mad.

Nowadays, good doesn’t mean good anymore, it’s also just become a synonym for bad.

When did this happen?

There is something in the inauthentic smile on the masks that people put on nowadays. The fakeness in when you see photos and everyone is so happy. I mean I’m not saying people can’t be happy but a lot of the time people just aren’t. And that does not mean people are sad. Like, just reading that, saying that people aren’t happy automatically made me think people are sad. Why can’t people just be neutral.

Why do people feel the need to be happy all the time?

If you are always happy then what is happiness?

It only devalues it. It’s irreverent.

Putting a smile on your face when you walk out everyday just so people will think you’re happy and then they’ll be happy? It’ll only cause harm to yourself and others. It’s why social media works so well. Turns out, watching other people be happy having the best moments of their lives doesn’t do great things to your mental health and self esteem. You’ll only look at how lackluster you are. Pro tip, their lives aren’t as interesting as you think. They probably spend most of their time sitting doing the same thing you are. But in normality, just putting on a smile and seeing others happy achieves generally the same thing, because it isn’t smiles, blue skies and rainbows on the inside either. It’s one of the major contributing factors to why mental health issues rates are at an all time high.

And then, if you are always smiling, how will people tell if you are sad? What if you just don’t want to smile, but you aren’t sad? What happens then?

Do you really understand your own emotions? After suppressing them for so long, do you have a grip on yourself?

A world where everything is smiley, and there is no variety, everyone just aiming to be happy and the same creates a world of depression, where people can’t match up to others and worrying that they are going to be a burden. It’s the never ending cycle of ying and yang. Except it’s not calm and zen it’s just sadness; where emotions are suppressed because you might be different, and you might be a black swan in a sea of white.

The black swan is more beautiful than the white ones. It’s authentic, it’s why it’s a symbol of being comfortable in your own skin, or rather here, emotions.

And like, it’s not just a personal thing, it’s a societal expectation nowaday’s and its so toxic. Happiness shouldn’t be a constant flow, it should be a special thing saved for fleeting moments where you feel otherworldly. A smile shouldn’t be a thing on everyone’s faces, it should be a bright light where people can see that and be like ”woah, that guy is having a good time”. Like, I don’t know, being happy all the time is so tiring, it’s like so hard to do. Especially, when you aren’t feeling so good. It’s fine to be okay, it’s fine to be meh, it’s fine to be fine. Just don’t put a mask, it’s doing yourself and others an injustice.

So how’s your day?