LITH Vol.8 - In Pursuit of Happiness—or So We Think

Happiness, these days, seems to be quite the loaded word. What do we mean when we define it? At the end of the day, Is happiness what you come home to, or is it something that you are constantly venturing out into the word in search of?  What is happiness? In today’s social and economic climate, the pressure to attain high scholastic achievement, land a successful job, maintain a balanced and colorful social life all while searching for mister and/or misses “right” is unbelievably high—to say nothing of the fact that you’re probably going to want your keepers to stick around.

The term “keeper” being one that is applicable to either the job or the spouse, since it’s looking more and more like having the cake and eating it too just doesn’t happen all that often. Well, to that I say screw having or eating the cake. Maybe it’s time to take the whole damn thing and tell the world to stick it. Just the other day I had a conversation with a friend of mine about their thoughts regarding online-dating sites. The response I got can only be described as submissively complacent. This friend of mine seems to think that it’s becoming “more and more common” to end up with someone you meet over the internet.

All I kept thinking was that the idea of having an online-dating presence at the age of twenty was the absolute height of sadness. I’m sure it is becoming more and more common for happy couples to end up the byproduct of internet-matchmaking, but something tells me these are people well beyond the years of frat parties and studying for finals. Then again, this observation, in and of itself, only reinforces the notion that at the end of the day you must decide what it is that makes you happy.

Scratch that—what makes you really happy. Can you have a fabulous career and a fabulous him or her, or does there come a point where you must decide what is going to make you unconditionally happy at the end of each and every day? Who knows. Maybe we all ought to spend a little less time worrying about the brushstrokes and a little more time worrying about the big picture. And when we finally find what fills in all of that empty canvas space, so what if it’s a little splotchy? Stick it in a big ol’ frame and tack it up for all to see. Sometimes we all need to be reminded of what true happiness really looks like.