Longing for Peacefulness
Of course everyone wants to be happy, but at what price?
2026 has marked the end of The Boys, a TV series about mad super-humans fighting mad humans. All in all, the finale season was somewhat underwhelming, but that’s not what I want to discuss. Rather, there was a specific dialogue uttered by one of the characters that has boggled my mind ever since it was aired. The character, named Sister Sage, is told to be the most intelligent human in The Boys’ universe. At one point, another character questioned her motives on a betrayal scheme. Why would she wanted, let’s just say, to kill another superhuman and basically wreak havoc to the world. To which she replied:
Cause I’ll be watching from my cozy bunker outside Colorado Springs. And when it’s all over, I can read all day every day, no one bothering me. Nothing but peace and quiet forever.
Well, isn’t that interesting, all that she wished to have is nothing but peace and quiet forever. How does that make sense? Are those things so precious, precious enough for someone labelled as the most intelligent human to desire? I wanted to brush it off as just lazy writing, but I felt there’s something deeper here, some sort of inconvenient truth about our lives.
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At around the same time, I was listening to a podcast when that similar subject came up. Jack Maller, the founder and CEO of Strike, mentioned how his view about happiness has shifted. It’s no longer a goal, just information. What he strives for, now, is to be at peace. Again, it’s easy to brush it off as something obvious. But no, I actually paused that podcast after I listened to that statement. I kept on thinking: what does it mean to set aside happiness and choose peace instead as a goal?
I decided to share this conundrum in one of my discussion with a friend. Thankfully, this one friend knew me well enough not to laugh at me from the get-go. And it works, as always. Having to put my thought process into words always helps. I understood then how peacefulness is different to happiness, how reading undisturbed for hours is peaceful when backpacking around the world could technically bring more happiness. The answer lies on how happiness — by the definition agreed upon by society writ large — demands emotional investment, and itself is the payoff of that investment.
I’m not trying to judge which one is better than the other, I merely want to understand my preference, and why so. Bungee jumping definitely would bring happiness to my younger self, but not so now. I would spend so much time worrying now, and I no longer think that emotional investment worth it. Maybe it’s just a trait of getting older, highly likely, but there’s also an understanding of oneself. In the era of instant gratification, everyone is trying to convince you that their version of happiness is so worth the investment, that you should do the same thing. I’d say, good for them.
Then, yes, I agree that peacefulness is what I’m longing for now. I already knew that reading is what compels me, but even until last year, I felt guilt whenever I spent more than an hour a day just reading. I could’ve spent the time going out, being productive, growing myself, bla bla bla. Nope. Hats off to The Boys, be it deliberate or not, to incept this question in my head. I’m on Sister Sage’s camp now. But don’t worry, I won’t put the world in chaos or stake my freedom just to be able to read all day.
