Just a week ago, my sister broke the good news that she’s been shortlisted for a position at the London counterpart of their company. Of course, we were happy with the announcement although the prospect of a family member moving away seemed a bit daunting. According to her, this move would allow her to practice auditing in a larger scale. It would expose her to a bigger playing field, giving her an opportunity to practice the sort of auditing that is stumped by the relatively smaller industry here in the Philippines.

However, a few days ago, she expressed some doubts about the big move. Among many other reasons, one stood out for me. A colleague asked her to think about whether the job (which would entail moving her entire life abroad, away from her family and friends, and starting over in a land away from her support system) would make her happy.

I got a bit flustered with that. I’m no accountant but I know a lot about happiness in the workplace (or the lack thereof haha) despite being relatively new to my field. I told her that at her age (she’s in her mid-20s), she shouldn’t even be putting her happiness at the topmost (not saying that this should take the backseat, though. More on this later.) of her priorities and should instead focus on her long-term goals. Heck, I told her, I wouldn’t even stay and endure three miserable years of residency training if happiness was my primary goal. I might not have conveyed this properly, though. 😰

What I had in mind at that time was this article that I’ve read from a few years back. It floated the idea that hedonistic happiness is quite different from meaningful happiness. Hedonistic happiness seems to be more focused on the here and now while meaningful happiness tends to be geared towards long-term happiness, hence entailing sacrifices and a bit of misery. While that in itself is a bit difficult to discuss, the idea that each of us have different definitions of happiness makes the whole thing trickier.

And I think that’s the problem with us nowadays. We tend to put hedonistic happiness foremost in our priorities that we often neglect meaningful happiness. It’s not helping that finding your own meaning doesn’t come that easily nor do the results come instantly. I’m not going to pretend that I get the hang of this because I sometimes still end up with noncontributory decisions to my meaningful happiness, though. But I guess in this situation, it would be helpful to always remember our ultimate goals in life and to be open to hardships and suffering along the way. Otherwise, we’d end up going for choices that would be good in the short-term for our hedonistic happiness and then shortchanging ourselves in the long run.

So…have you found your meaning yet?