It’s been almost a month since I moved to New York. I’m not sure if it’s the busy work schedule or something else, but the excitement I felt when I first moved to San Francisco from Atlanta somehow hasn’t quite resurfaced here. Back then in San Francisco, I had this eagerness to wander and explore. I never missed the chance to catch a movie, exhibition, or concert—even if there weren’t many. Strangely in New York, where these things are so abundant and accessible, they’ve somehow been downgraded to “there’s always tomorrow”. More often than not, I end up staying home reading or coding (wait, did something odd just slip in there?). As the Buddha said, human nature tends to escape from freedom—sigh, uncomfortably accurate.
It’s true that life has become much more convenient. In the Bay Area, most authentic Chinese restaurants are tucked away in the South Bay. Since I don’t have a car and don’t like heading south, my Chinese stomach was practically hammered into a Californian one. In New York, especially around the East Village, authentic Chinese and other Asian eateries are everywhere. The luxury of strolling out for late-night skewers is once again within reach. But probably also because of that “there’s always tomorrow” mentality, my foodie-index has actually dropped compared to my Bay Area days. At least now I can walk past HARBS every day without feeling compelled to step in.
While getting ready in the mornings lately, I’ve been listening to a podcast on the three typical sources of human happiness. The first comes from hormones like dopamine or endorphine. For example, you might sit on the curb by the road and rest after a morning run. Nothing much has happened, but you suddenly feel inexplicably content with life. The beautiful scenery, great food, and new experiences encountered while traveling also fall into this category. The second type of happiness is driven by fear. Sometimes people do things not because they actually enjoy the activity itself, but because they fear the consequences of not doing it—like losing the “excellent” persona. When the possibility of such consequences is temporarily eliminated, we feel at ease. A typical example is the obsession with things that are “impossible to achieve”. For example, getting an offer from a competitive company might feel great not because you genuinely like the company itself, but simply because “I did something others couldn’t. I’m fxxking awesome!” The third type is driven by creativity—quite literally, the happiness that comes from outputting value to the world through your own creations.
This is something I’ve been shower-thinking about a lot lately, especially since moving to New York. Social media these days has greatly embraced the idea of being single—everywhere you see sentiments like “don’t expect marriage or intimate relationships to rescue you; if you can’t figure out your own life or make yourself happy, adding another person won’t change that anyway.” By that definition, I’d say I’m fairly self-sufficient: I can always find joy in art, in exploring a city, in long runs. However, the longer time goes on and the more I wander, the less satisfied I feel with just the first two types of happiness. Without grounding in creativity, there’s always this flicker of emptiness.
Sure, software engineering demands creativity—that may explain why I sometimes get completely absorbed in work(?). But just like investing requires diversification, diverse creative energy may also enhance the resilience of happiness. I’ve met people who are constantly traveling, posting check-ins and polished photos, but when you get to know them in depth, you realize these external experiences have never been internally digested. They’ve “seen the world”, but their essence remains fundamentally superficial and fragile—and so does their happiness.
As for me…I probably won’t tire of the urban energy of big cities anytime soon. But at the same time, I hope I can take more of that energy inward, transform it, and then output it back into the world in my own way. Let’s see if that’s what a sustainable, virtuous cycle of happiness looks like.