“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? “
– The Pursuit of Happyness
I’ll start with a really simple story. Picture a kid; perfectly normal, nothing special. He was in the ninth grade, and found himself crying in bed, afraid of school the next day. It happened so frequently that it was part of his routine. Wake up, get ready, catch that bus, head to class, sit in one corner and not speak until spoken to; when the bell rang, pack up and head home. He would pray no one on the bus spoke to him, he just wanted to be left alone. No reason in particular; he felt he was either too good, or not good enough to engage in company. He would reach home, spend a few hours in front of the television and maybe a novel, and then head to bed, thinking of the dreadful day that was, and the one that would follow. He had convinced himself that he was a disease, because people wanted to stay away from him. Just to reiterate, it wasn’t that he thought he had a disease, he thought he was the disease. He thought he was being punished for something. This kid was fourteen, he didn’t have the maturity to think. He reasoned that he was the center of the universe and spent a lot of time in his own thoughts, asking a higher power why he was made the way he was. Oh, how envy and jealousy boiled within him. When he looked toward the others around him, and thought they were the coolest. He would observe the kids gather in groups, chit-chatting and joking around, always wishing that he was a part of it.
A few years of this passed, and this kid started gaining confidence. Slightly, not noticeably. He spoke to a few people, here and there, started making friends, started talking, making an effort. He did his best, and he was getting there, starting to find out more about himself. He even wound up with a girlfriend at the end of his school years, who’ d have thought. But still.... he felt incomplete. He wasn’t happy, he was greedy. He wanted more, he coveted more.
When college started, he got himself his second girlfriend. She was beautiful and well out of his league (or so, he felt). He thought he didn’t deserve her, and thus began his path of putting her over himself. He thought he was rewarded, he felt that he had reached his peak. He was eighteen. So in the years that followed, he convinced himself that he was happy. He had more friends now than he did four years ago. He slowly started to get a good sense from life, and come to terms with his place in it. At the same time, he idolized her and spent most of his time thinking about her. Yet…. he still felt incomplete. Something was missing. He had friends; he had a smokin’ hot girlfriend. He had most of what he wanted four years ago. And still, it felt unfinished.
On a different note, I celebrated my twenty-fourth birthday last weekend. The guest list had around forty people turning up, and accordingly, I went out shopping for the party. When it came down to it, after all the bills were settled, I saw that I had spent $170 on the party. It didn’t really shock me; I was all right with it. But I began to ask myself- why did I do that? After quite an extravagant spending spree in the summer, and the fact that I was touching bankruptcy (graduate student problems), why then did I go ahead and throw such a lavish party. I certainly had no reason to, I could have been frugal. I pondered this on the few hours before my party, as I was setting things up.
It occurred to me, that I had never truly celebrated my birthday before. Of course, I’ve had parties as a child. But as I grew up, I was always short of people (to put it in a good sense). My birthdays were always spent meeting a few friends or relatives, and answering calls. I would never really want the day to come, because I didn’t see the point of it. And when it arrived, I would just wait for it to end, and life to resume, as always. So when I was setting up my place, I realized that this is the first party I’m actually hosting. Not just in the States; in my life. For the first time, I actually had enough people to invite, so as to classify it as a ‘party’ and not just a ‘gathering’. I told myself that I didn’t mind dishing out the money. Because I didn’t feel I would ever regret it. I felt happy, I felt excited. These were emotions I never associated with my birthday (pretty crazy, right?).
I slowly became aware of the fact that this party wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for me at all. It was for that kid. That kid who cried himself to sleep at night. That kid who was jealous of all the cool kids in school. That kid who thought he was destined to be nothing. That kid who didn’t think he had friends. I owed him a party. I owed him twenty-three years’ worth. If only that kid realized that all he had to do was be patient, and wait, good things would come. But that’s not how kids think.
It took that kid ten years, to realize what he was missing all this time. He felt he was broken, he felt insufficient. He thought that friends would fix it. They didn’t. He thought that a girlfriend would fix it. She didn’t. He thought that money would fix it. It didn’t. He went and searched for all of them, and got them all. But only after ten years, did he actually perceive, that what was missing…. was him. He wasn’t happy, because he looked externally for happiness. He thought happiness was visual. He thought it was materialistic. He thought it could be defined. All he had to do was look inside; it was right there. In all of this searching, he had found himself. He had found a way to be grateful for everything that he had, and not covet what he didn’t. It took him ten years, to grow up.
That was why, I concluded, that I was comfortable with the money I was putting in. Not to quote the same movie twice, but – “This part of my life... this part right here? This is called "happyness." “. Because for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m the cool kid. Because for the first time in my life, I feel wanted. And because for the first time, in twenty-four years, I had a reason to celebrate my birthday.