Glum Times

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New Paper
4 April 2009

S'poreans most pessimistic, shows survey of PMEBs

Why I feel S'poreans are so glum

By Ng Tze Yong

IS THE future a heap of contradictions for many Singaporeans?

It is vibrant - Singapore is pulling out all stops to become a throbbing, global city.

At the same time, it is uncertain - we are just a little red dot tossed by global tides.

Can the latter account for the pessimism reflected in the AXA survey? Several past surveys have similarly shown up this pessimistic streak.

Is it possible to be vibrantly glum?

Or gloomily vibrant?

How would that feel?

It's not an oxymoron. It's the reality of life for the middle-class Singaporeans surveyed by AXA - professionals, managers, executives and businessmen (PMEBs) with monthly income levels of $2,500 and above.

We are the lucky ones who benefited from the toil of our parents.

Today, we have the cash, we have travelled, and we are the ones with the means to make this city truly bustling and vibrant.

We can afford to visit fancy restaurants. We count among our circle of friends the expats and permanent residents who have settled here.

Many of us are patrons of the Biennales and assorted arts festivals.

In short, our lives throb and add to the vibrancy of living in one of the most bustling cities today.

But deep down there can also be an emptiness.

You feel it yourself sometimes; you hear about it from friends all the time.

Happiness comes up often as a topic of conversation among us, surfacing in many ways.

Sometimes, it's a philosophical discussion that stretches into the night.

Other times, it slips out when a bank officer friend muses about his job, half-drunk, at the end of a long night.

It comes out disguised as restlessness, in our thirst for exotic travel.

And returns as amazement, when we describe in awe how happy children in a poor Cambodian village were.

Temporary relief

Shopping, spending, splurging, on oneself, on the wife or kids - these things help banish a sense of a lack of purpose.

But by and large, we see ourselves leading lives in the fast lane, blindly trailing the car in front.

We spend our lives climbing up the ladder until, at the end of it all, we realise it was leaning against the wrong wall.

Still, to dismiss this gloom as whining may be simplistic.

The middle-class, affluent Singaporeans got to where they are today because they made use of the opportunities gifted to them, fought their way through school and out of childhoods in cramped two-room flats.

They are proven fighters.

But what is it, then, that makes such fighters whine? Is it insufficient money, rootedness or love?

In my view, we are unhappy simply because we want to be happy.

We are not willing to settle for a meaningless existence.

We care about what we live for, even if we don't know exactly what it is.

We are willing to be unhappy for the sake of being happy, rather than settle for a bland, mediocre existence.

Now, that wouldn't be another contradiction, would it?