Hong Kong: a city drowning in its own unhappiness?
Alice Wu says recent reports on our unhappy students and workers highlight the extent to which people rely on external circumstances for fulfilment, suggesting the folly of this approach
The news is seriously making me depressed. Over the past month, there has been a flood of reports suggesting this city is drowning in its own misery.
First we got bumped down an Economist Intelligence Unit ranking of the world's most liveable cities by a whopping 15 spots. Then, as our students were heading back to school, we learned that a Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service and Institute of Education survey has found that half of our secondary school students showed signs of depression, with almost a quarter having considered suicide.
And it gets worse - six out of 10 Hongkongers are unhappy in their jobs, according to a survey by a jobs website. We are so miserable that when we crowned a straight-A Cambridge-educated Miss Hong Kong, we bashed her for her privileged life and her lack of real setbacks in life.
Depressed and suicidal teens should worry us. But one must wonder whether those behind the survey have accounted for the teenagers' raging hormones. As a teenager, I worried about my future and was concerned that I was somehow not good enough. That 29.3 per cent of the students reported having the same anxieties seems normal.
Is perfection our only chance at being happy? Perhaps we need to ask: are we looking for happiness in the right places?
In fact, considering how much pressure we pile on our children from a very young age, and how gruelling our exam-obsessed school system is, the figure seems surprisingly low.
The authors of the survey had suggested spending time with family and friends, and exercising regularly to help youngsters fight depression. That's sensible, but it fails to reflect reality. How much time do our students have, outside school and tutorials, to do those simple things?