The Pursuit of Happiness

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I don’t want to be tortured.

I want to be happy, no matter how simplistic a goal that may have seemed in my youth. I’m not as interested these days in life’s grand operas as I am in life’s tiny movements. The most successful life is the one most enjoyed. And every one of us, through the mere act of living, garners enough material on the human condition to write a million masterpieces: enough beauty, enough poignancy, and yes, enough suffering. There is a reason why boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back always has been, and always will be, the greatest story ever told.

A cynical person, perhaps even a younger version of me, would say that I have dumbed myself down: that I am deluded to think my middle class dramas and day-to-day trials are worthy of documentation. But, the older I get, the more I realize that life is just a series of moments. It’s how heavy or light you feel when you wake up in the morning. It’s how many laughs you share over dinner. It’s how often your heart swells with happiness in any given week.

And I have never forgotten the wasted, endless monotony of the hours and days I spent yearning for just a single happy moment. I have never forgotten how exhausting it is to daily teeter on the edge of a pit so vast and inviting it takes every ounce of strength not to slip down and fall into the blackness.

I may never be a genius, but I have finally figured out that there’s nothing simple-minded about the pursuit of happiness.