Continuing My Pursuit

"It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?"

This was a cool thought to me. It's from The Pursuit of Happyness. The idea, though, of never actually attaining what we all desperately search for: being happy. Something in that quote and that idea draws me in. And it continues to do so until I actually think about it. That's where the rest of this goes...

First of all, there is a point in the movie where Will Smith says, "This part of my life... this part right here? This is called 'happiness.'" So disproves his own theory. But that wasn't the point of writing this.

There is some truth to the theory. It takes some distinction between ideas, but the state of being happy is not a plateau. There's never a point you can reach where you just become happy. There's no job, no spouse, no car that can bring you to stage of eternal bliss. Marrying the love of your life might be a big part of it, landing your dream job, driving your dream car, these are all very big parts. And most of us are thankful for the health we have, the friends we share, and the experiences we've come to endure that add up to equal each and every one of us. But at the end of the day, there's no achieving happiness. Why? Like Dennis Leary says, happiness comes in small doses. Happiness is a constantly revolving series of acts, thoughts, moments, and people that positively impact your life and cause you to feel some sort of appreciation for life and the way that you're living it.

And it's that idea that makes this whole topic a shade of gray. Who's to say that the pursuit of happiness isn't the part that makes you happy. Of course, that would depend on the path. Obviously, Christopher Gardner's path was one of absolute crap, and I would imagine there wasn't a lot of the no money, late payments, moving from an apartment to a hotel to a subway bathroom, the parking tickets, the sink baths and bus fares, none of it left him with a warm feeling of happiness. But for everyone who's ever heard the cliché of the destination is not important, it's the journey. The same idea applies to this happiness debate.

So no, on my journey towards unequivocal happiness, I am not 'happy' with it until you have some time to reflect. I don't wake up every day smiling to be alive. I don't fall asleep to pleasant dreams every night. I don't say hi to everyone or feel peace on my drives home from work. But at the end of it all, and the end of the years, the months, the weeks, even at the end of most days, I can look back and say that while there are parts of my life that I wish were different, where there is room for improvement, where there is room for companionship, for competitiveness, for something bigger or better than what I have now, I cannot say to anyone that my pursuit of happiness does something besides make me happy, thereby disqualifying the theory, while at the same time, keeping it alive in order to drive further pursuit.

Who says I like run-ons? 101 word sentences with 13 commas happen all the time.