Some Thoughts Formed Late One Night When I Could Take My Misery No Longer

I am learning about happiness; about its primordial relationship with the myth of Adam and Eve. How they were cast out of paradise to carve their lives out of thorns and sweat and obedience to a lost God. Some people say that to be human is to seek for happiness, and they assure themselves that means they have a Puritan right to be good people and live in a big house with a fancy car gleaming in the driveway before it, their possessions announcing their candle-on-a-hill-ness to the entire neighborhood and crying out their worthiness to the entire world. "Look at me. You are starving, and I don't care. This is what it is to be happy."

Happiness is scratched from the earth. It is stolen in quiet, rare moments that have been saturated in meaning, full of promise and hope. These erudite moments shine bravely, like stars, a collection of a very few caught together on your palm; a few for a whole life lived. Happiness doesn't just come; it is not bred of the ignorance of failing to pay attention to how badly things suck. It may be our right, as humans, but we certainly squander our other rights: to be beautiful, and brave, and good, readily enough. Why should our right to happiness be any different?

But I am learning. I am learning of the hope that must be poured into it, and the patience, and the refusal to give up, no matter what -- because once existence is kindled in you, it cannot be stopped.