I have just finish reading a piece of essay forwarded by a friend from KL. Apparently, this was the winning entry of the 15-18 year old category for the Commonwealth Essay Competition. It was written by a young Singaporean girl who wanted to “Through my story, I attempted to convey the unique East-versus-West struggles and generation gaps that I felt were characteristic of young people in my country”.

It was a good story but with a terrible ending. It wasn’t the fact that the daughter is neglecting her mother. The bigger picture was that as I grow up, I see the same repeated story theme over and over again. There’s this big arguments between Eastern and Western values. If you remove the words “East” and “West”, you start to notice that it’s really not that different in other parts of the world. It’s more of a generation gap than anything else. And frankly, I’m bored of these kind of story themes.

Sure, stories like this makes big bucks. Sells books. Gets a lot of sympathy. At the end of the day, this theme starts to wear off pretty quickly. I don’t know about you lot out there but I have enough worries about living my own life that I don’t need to be influence by stories of dysfunctional relationships.

I’m also a person who prefers happy endings as well as having to live a life with as less hassle as possible. And that means being more patient with my Granny, other grannies, parents and relatives. It’s giving and taking but I do try not to think about it too much. If it’s not too much to ask for, then I’m fine with it. If not, then it’s time to reason with them.

Yes, it’s an unpopular trend to be happy and to not be interested in dysfunctional-relationship-stories that I’m following. Heck, it’s my own life and I’m enjoying it as much as I can.

Don’t you think that a lot of people these days are more fearful of happiness and contentment because it involves being honest, truthful, patient and actually having to forgive someone?

Think about it.