The Cloak of Happiness

I think that it is quite amazing how one day we can be up and on another day we can be down. But it is a different case for every person. For some, the internal-self’s lament shines like a flashlight low on batteries; much duller, dimmer, faultier than the next human’s. For some, motivation and desire “to get things done” is not acquired on some extraordinary day, rather it is built in. So should the rest of us take pills or begin some sort of therapy to acquire this motivation. Is feeling down in the dumps all the time a disease just as measles or syphilis is? Or is this lack of the “right stuff” required to be successful just something we have to thrust forward through by our lonesome?

I personally have no idea. But, it does seem like we live in an age where happiness is of the essence. We have no great war to fight. But you may bring to my attention, “what about the War on Iraq?” Well my answer is, the war is too far away. For more than 90 percent of the population it just doesn’t hit close to home. And when it finally did on September 11 it’s almost as if America just wanted to clean up the mess as quickly as possible, look the other way, and concentrate on achieving our happiness again. Not as though being happy is a bad thing. By no means. Being happy, and the struggle to keep reaching this zenith is one of the things that keeps us going in life. Something to look forward to in life. It makes tomorrow OK.

But it seems as though this struggle to become happy, at times can work in just the opposite fashion. When our high expectations let us down, when our goals of happiness falter, it leaves us nothing to hold onto except for sadness. Maybe our search for happiness is selfish. I don’t mean to sound cliché, but maybe helping others out will in return make us happy. But still this doesn’t make sense because if your helping your dad out by mowing the lawn or dusting a very dusty house of the crazy old lady next door with the mindset of “this is going to make me happy,” then you are still driven by the goal of personal happiness. The trick I guess then, is to be able to do nice things for others without thinking, “Hey everyone this is going to make me happy.”

But we all struggle with trying to become happy rather then just receiving naturally and unknowingly. I have no obligation to save the old lady getting mugged by some asshole who makes steeling purses his vocation because I don’t run into this situation. On a broader scale I can come up with no evil, at least no threatening or prevalent evil that I can will myself up to fight against. And with no real cause in this life what do we have to live for? Again with the cliché: we have to search deep down. Because this war we are fighting is definitely not a great war in which land exchanges hands but to quote Tyler Durden, “A spiritual war.” What we need is an unexpected gain or acquisition; A pleasant surprise visit from the spirit of achievement. Maybe I’m going in circles and swerving outside the fence posts but I just don’t think enough of us have found our great calling, our cause that will make us happy without recognizing that happiness was indeed what was under the veil the entire time.