Clap Your Hands
You don’t have to take my word for it, but I’ve been lonely enough in the past and happy enough in the present to say that someday, you’ll realize happiness is all about them, not you. That is, the only way to be happy or have a semblance of that feeling is to make everyone around you happy, or at least more positive about life than you. The ego is an empty shell, a dark cavern filled with stale air. Amusing ourselves with fanciful vacations, a cabinet full of DVDs, an altar of trophies and recognitions — the thrill fades after a while, once our brains develop enough neural networks and mature enough to realize we’re just setting ourselves up for a huge fall during the midlife crisis. The more exciting it is at the beginning, the more hollow it is in the end. And then we’ll know what’s wrong: that we’ve been trying so hard to make the man in the mirror happy that we’ve forgotten he’s just a false reflection. We cannot ever get to him. He is merely a tool. A nothingness for something. That something is your mother, your brother, your girlfriend, your friend, neighbor, father, grandmother, dog, fish. When everyone finally stands up smiling, hugs you, kisses you, maybe for once, you’d be thankful to have been yourself. To make everyone but ourselves happy, that may be the road to true happiness. We all know it’s impossible.
