Birthdays and gifts

Someone just asked me what i wanted for my birthday. And that question suddenly sparked a whole series of thoughts and questions in my head. What is it with material gifts that make people happy? Was just thinking and i realized that i dont' need all this shit to be happy. Gifts and things are like that are really superficial and dont' really mean anything. The things that matter the most are things that money can't buy. And sometimes i wonder why do i want to waste my time chasing after material things when everything that i could possible need to be happy is already in my grasp. Unfortunately most of the time, i don't realize all this and i think that i need money and more money to be happy. That i need to get a nice house, a nice car, nice furniture, nice tech stuff etc to be happy. To enjoy life. At times, i ask myself, do i really need all those things? Or issit just that i'm falling into the trap of wanting to belong to society? To conform to societal needs and wants. I mean, do i really want a life surrounded by superficial things and the only entertainment would be to go shopping and watch a movie? What happened to my dreams of traveling? What happened to my dreams of tasting exotic foodand staying in dodgy inns? What happened to my dreams of visiting new countries and meeting new people? What happened to my dreams of being a travelling reporter and trying to change the world? And what am i doing now? Stuck in a job just because i need the money to buy the stuff which i think i need. Shit...
What do i want with my life? What do i want?

I want to be happy.
I want to be different.
I want to make a statement.

Here's the hard part. How do i achieve those things? How can i be different? How can i make a statement? How can i be happy? How how how? Fuck, i dont' want to be stuck doing something for a decade or two, get sucked into marriage and kids then suddenly wake up when i'm 50 and realize that i'm unhappy. That i'm bored. That i need to do something more meaningful with my life. (I know this is some sort of a contradiction with my previous blog but doing some serious soul searching right now. )

But then again, what IS happiness? Issit just some sort of illusion put forth into our minds that we need to be happy to exist? Being happy is so different for different people. Different people have different standards of happiness. Different degrees of happiness.

Need to do some serious soul searching. Need to ask myself some serious questions. What do i really want? Think about myself for once. Think about what i want and not what everyone else expects of me. Not what if my actions will affect my relationship with my family and my darling.

Just gotta think...