Happiness

It's what I search for... a personal search for meaning in my life. After all, in all but a very very few situations, everything we do in life is in the pursuit of happiness. Sure, you can get smart with me and maybe say that going to school doesn't make you happy. However, if you go there by your own free will, it's in pursuit of some future reward. If you go unwillingly, it's because there's some force keeping you in...a force which, disobeyed, would bring you more unhappiness then school.

If you really want to get smart about it, you could go and do something completely random just to prove me wrong. Sadly, completing such an act causes you pleasure or satisfaction at your ability to disprove me... in it's own right, happiness.

It's a fleeting thing after all... Today, when between schools, I realized that I was happy. Genuinely and truly happy with my life at the current point in time. I had just come from doing something I found pleasurable (working with computers) and was on my way to band, which I enjoy immensely. To top it off, the song on the radio was perfect to sing along to. Of course, at this point you can cue Murphy's Law. No sooner than I had realized my happiness I managed to find two dead cats and an ambulance in quick succession.

Perhaps we can feel guilty when we are happy.... after all, we know that whenever we're joyful, another's sad. With every birth a death is inevitable. Every time we're fed, another person goes hungry. Empathy combined with the problems of the world makes for a sad state of affairs. Is it wrong to feel happy?

I think not. If one stops feeling joy on the behalf of others, isn't that just turning them into the people who are taking away the joy in the first place?