Happiness Is a Match-Three Game

As a kid I got about 50 yuan a week in pocket money,
already upper-middle among my classmates.
A pack of instant noodles cost 50 cents to a yuan.
Back then, what worried me was this:
How great would it be to eat a 10-yuan chicken drumstick every day?
Or better yet, to own the corner shop?

Then one day, I really could afford to buy a corner shop.
Only to find I couldn't eat that many snacks,
and didn't even want to that much anymore.
Odds are, eating all of it would wreck my body anyway.
Spicy, greasy, sweet —
all of it gives me acne and leaves me constipated…
Now only by snacking with real restraint
can I still enjoy a little of the joy of snacks.

Once I went to a friend's baby's 100-day banquet.
The table was loaded:
lobster, grouper, soft-shell turtle, giant whelk, sand worms, roast goose…
On any normal day, each of these is a prized delicacy, each one a wow.
But for some reason, that day all my brain could hear was the hum of signal overload,
and then it suddenly hit me:

Happiness is like a match-three game. One joy is a joy; put three joys together, and they vanish.

So good dishes should still come out one at a time,
and good fortune can only be savored a little at a time.

The toys I loved as a kid, my family wouldn't buy.
Grown up, I overcompensated.
Toy cars, toy guns, wind-up toys, telescopes, ornaments,
wine, cigars, golf, incense holders,
drones, boxing, camping, swimming, skiing — a dozen or two in all…
And every hobby's gear comes as a full set, so it multiplies,
until one day I looked at a storeroom piled to the ceiling
and realized how rarely I open any of it.
Every passing whim had turned into a consumerist trap —
no wonder they call it "falling down the rabbit hole."
A person's energy is limited; you can only climb around in so many holes.
The more it cost to buy, the more it hurts to throw away.

There are always things in life money can't fix.
For example:
the rich still have to go to the bathroom themselves,
the rich have childhood wounds too,
the rich still have to run from natural disasters,
the rich die too.

Whatever money can outsource has already been outsourced.
The problems that land in your own hands are the ones money can't solve.
And if money can't solve it, how simple could it be?
They're all the kind of problems that drive you up the wall.

Knowing the rich can be unhappy too, I feel a whole lot happier.