Another Happily Single Valentine’s Day
Last year I was happily single on Valentine’s day. This year, I’m happy to report, I am still single.
India has taught me a lot about social pressure, and I’m not sure there is any greater social pressure in Indian society than to get married. Married people seem to be perceived as more grounded and mature. Marriage and children appears to be the only path toward lasting happiness. Maybe so. I don’t know. I just know a lot of people out there get depressed on this day for no reason.
If you are depressed today…
- Enjoy being single. If you ask any married person I’m sure they’ll say they wished they had done X, Y, or Z before they got married. Do X or Y or Z today. Really, go do it now.
- If being alone makes you sad, what makes you think that being together with someone will make you happy? Only YOU can make yourself happy. Another person can’t be your medicine to make you happy. They can be like a drug or addiction though, making you think that without them you’ll be unhappy. That’s not good.
- The less you want to find that special someone, the more likely you probably are to find him/her. I can’t provide a link to some scientific study about this, but anecdotally I can say that not caring has given me many more opportunities to meet girls on this trip. Back in normal life when I was shy and tried so hard to find someone nothing ever worked. Instead I just kept digging the unhappiness hole farther and farther into the ground.
- If you focus on being awesome, which for me is doing good from the heart (not doing good for the ego/brain and not after careful cost/benefit analysis), then you’ll attract more awesomeness. Focus on being yourself, heck, finding yourself since that’s so difficult to begin with in Western society, and you’ll attract like-minded, powerful awesomeness to propel you further in an already happy life. And if you don’t find someone, you’re more than likely already quite content and happy as it is.
If nothing else fails, I call upon the sage wisdom of Barney Stinson from the TV show How I Met Your Mother. Focus on getting more awesome, doing good for others, doing good for yourself and your soul, and you’ll attract what you want and need in life. I promise.
Sage Wisdom From Barney Stinson
If that didn’t work, try this one.
An Amazing Story By Barney Stinson
Hi Adam!
You are TRULY AWESOME. I wish I could travel with you.
(Yes, im sitting at my office desk as I type this….Your blog is my only form of escape).
Happy Valentine’s Day to you. Safe travels 🙂
Hi Vikki,
Thanks for the nice feedback! I hope you can enjoy your own adventure very soon 🙂
Good luck and I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!
Adam, you define awesomeness! In new ways each day 🙂
I’m not sure about that, but thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
Dear Adam,
It’s a great feeling to read your experiences. I am really surprised by the fact that an alumnus of top B-school decided to quit his high profile job (which I am assuming and am pretty sure) to take up travel and volunteering! Kudos!
I found this particular blog amusingly funny, may be coz u have quoted Barney Stinson! This piece of blog made me realize Barney has got some sense, after all!! 😛 I spend most of the Valentine’s day and my bdays alone and naturally loved this post for obvious reasons!
It has been my long term ambition to go around the globe and also to volunteer and realised recently that both combined together could be so much of a soul rewarding experience; this is when I came across your blog. My congratulations on your endeavour! I hope my dream happiness plunged
Thanks for the nice comment! Yes, Barney makes sense sometimes!
I hope you can realize your dreams going forward as well!
I hope the dream of my happiness plunge takes off sometime in my life!
Cheers,
Pavithra
I do too!