Heureux

'I just want you to be happy' three, not one, not two, but THREE different people have told me that in the last week. As if happiness is something that I can order off of the Wendy's 99 cent menu.  Which is why I gave the reply 'happiness is not on the menu.' The tricky part of the statement is that, in their own way (I think) each of them actually meant it. They actually want me to be happy. Why, I don't know, nor do I particularly care. The fact that when one of them told me 'they wanted me to be happy' they were in the middle of making me decidedly unhappy is an irony that was probably only evident to me.

The other two 'happy wishers' have also, at different times been in a position to make me happy, and or sad depending. I am just now beginning to realize that is my fault not theirs. The fact that I allow another person or persons to control my mood or emotions is just plain stupidity on my part, and it is something that will have to be changed, and soon. To continue to allow any other human being, and I am using that term very broadly, to have the ability to influence or determine my feelings is deplorable. I can not for the life of me sort out how the blue fuck, I allowed myself to be placed into such a position, but here I am. However, just because I am here, doesn't mean I am going to STAY here, and I think that a certain self-adjustment shall be made. Self-adjustments are the hardest to make, but when they are pulled off properly they are well worth it.


Each of these 'happy' souls also told me that they thought I would make a good father, again I had to disabuse them of that notion as well. As a card carrying misanthrope, and a cynic of the brutal type, I am fairly certain I would make an awful, awful father. My normal response is to say that i do not like children, and in many ways that is still true, but being a former child myself, I have now determined that it is the parents that I don't like. I certainly didn't like one of my at all, and the other one is currently not speaking to me, so maybe that colours my thinking a little bit, but I am beginning to warm to the idea of disliking parents.

I am sure that most parents do the best they can rearing their offspring, but it's just that most of them also do a really shit job of it. Children, from what I have been told, do not come with an instruction manual, and even worse, seem to have a mind of their own. Though I am not sure I am ever going to be ready to have children, mainly because of the potential 'motherships' out there seem to have disqualified, or disabled themselves in one way or another. There is a reason for this, but I lack the words (or the courage you pick) to explain that reason. It is just sufficient for now to say that their actions could never be reconciled with their words.

This happiness that these well meaning people wished me, is something that I am going to have to find myself. A lot of people will tell you that happiness is the presence of something, cold beer, warm women, a large piece of unguarded chocolate, can and may provide you happiness, but it is fleeting happiness. After the beer has been drunk, the chocolate eaten, and the woman has left (and each of these things will happen), then you are right back where you started, unhappy. That is if, of course, you allow the presence of things to make you happy. Another theory is it is the absence of things that can make you happy, the absence of pain, the absence of hunger, or maybe even the absence of people can make you happy. Once again a flawed theory, you are going to experience pain again, unless you die, you are going to get hungry again, and people just have a tendency of getting in the way. Leaving you back were you started, unhappy.

Happiness might be a bit too much to hope for, and besides is it really necessary?  After all there exist in this world people who go out of their way to attempt to ruin other people's happiness. Almost seems pointless to find happiness if there is just someone who is going to try to take it away.  Perhaps happiness is a house in the burbs, 2.5 children, and the white picket fence that we all liked to gently mock as rebellious free thinkers in our student days.   Or maybe it is some radiant city, that lets us drink for free, never age, and not have to go to work in the morning. Either way it is something that while elusive, need not be exclusive.