Am I stuck with the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment because I chose it? I watched a little bit of the X Factor 'Boot Camp' show tonight. One girl said she wants success like she wants to breathe. She is a teenager. She wants something she sees possible.
Could it be that everything that we seek is a copy of what someone has already achieved, then differentiated? When I am a boy, I want a toy; I want a toy because I have seen the toy. Even if I just saw it four seconds ago.
I don't know if the question ought to be why am I looking for happiness, but I am leaning more towards what is this happiness that I am searching for when I am searching for happiness?
A friend told me he wants four things in life. Marriage. Kids. [memory blank]. Happiness. Having all first three will give him number four. This is a model of happiness. Have these, have happiness. Happiness is desirable. It's also fleeting. But people are happy chasing happiness.
Happiness is capitalised upon by McDonald's and Coca-Cola. We are being sold what we have asked for. The number one dream we all have? To be happy. Is there a need in me that descend through to the fibre of my existence that wills I be happy? I don't think so. I reckon it's a behavior that we've learned, with a sentimental consequence we have habituated and learned.
Just like with what is immoral. Incest. Rape. Death. Torture. Terrorism. We have learned it is immoral. And if I declare it otherwise, I'll be immoral because I'm being amoral and I'm not caring about people who are suffering because their suffering is a blockage that prevents them from chasing their dream of happiness.
Happiness. Ever fleeting. Always chaseable. Never satisfiable. But we like the chase, don't we. Don't we. Don't worry, be happy. We've learned to want it. We've learned to learn to want it.
Think about it, what else can we aim to be, besides happy? Language allows us to say we can aim to be sad, or unhappy, or to just be, and all are definable and defined and valid. The impetus to move, to do, to go parks itself neatly into the car park we've languaged. Dream slots: happy, sad, fulfilled, enlightened, free etc. Each is a slot, we each have a coin, and we pick the feeling we're aiming for; most of the time, we pick happy, and on the way to the brief flashing of neon lights saying "You're happy now!", the coin travels through spiderwebs and sorrow and depression and apathy and whatever. I'm getting tired of writing this.
Tomorrow I'll wake up and want to be happy again. Even if I'm happy in the morning, I'll want it to continue. Happiness is always deferred happiness, isn't it, because we've learned to stretch it, to stretch it into the future?
I don't like this. I feel uneasy, like happiness should be free, should be wonderful and not sellable, but then I think this is an idea learned as well. Perhaps even my feelings are learned. Learned to the extent that they can be performed so I can have a full human experience which is probably learned as well. Maybe even intention is learned. Learned unconsciously. Maybe consciousness is learned, and it's just folding into itself right now.
I think, but I shouldn't think this, that my life matters only in terms that don't matter in my thoughts. Higher power? Happiness? A man in a white suit on top of a limousine. If I think not in cause/effect terms, then...
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