Timothy

The Quest for Happiness

The Quest for Happiness

The small boy wishes he would be grown up already; he wishes
he would
be allowed to stay up longer than 8pm; when he is allowed to
stay up
until 9pm, he complains that he can't stay up until 10; as he is
entering puberty, he wishes to find a girl friend; once he
has one, he
wishes to move out from the parent's house; once he moved
out, his
girlfriend wants to get married and have a child; to do that
he better
gets a decently paid job; once he has that and got married
and has a
child, he then wants another child; to fit the family, he
needs a
bigger car; then, long overdue, its time to buy a house;
having a
house, it soon becomes too small; after moving into the
larger house,
his wife starts looking old to him and he starts dreaming of
a younger
lover; having that, he realizes he's getting out of shape
for all this
and starts jogging in the morning for one hour; just in his
forties,
he is prone to his first heart attack; and, on top of that,
he starts
getting depressed because he starts realizing that his
lifespan goes
towards its end.

Fortunately, nowadays, thanks to the tremendous progress in
science
and technology, he doesn't need to dream for himself
anymore: he can
watch the dreams of others on TV and indulge in the display
of soapy
love, murder and rape - it's all just actors acting, isn't
it? - he
can forget his own dreams which spares him the
disappointment when he
doesn't fulfill them, isn't that great !?!

But then, every once a while, not too often, someone stops
in his
tracks, and starts having this strange idea of thinking
about what
he's thinking.

And when he does that and if he trusts himself enough to not
join the
next sect he comes across, he may look at what he really
wants. And he
may realize that he was chasing the dreams that others told
him to
dream; he may realize that he is dreaming a dream while he
is dreaming
a dream when he was already dreaming a dream in the middle
of a dream.
He may look around what others dream they're dreaming.
Finding out
that he is not the only one who looks for a way to wake up;
wondering
about what others do to find out what happiness 'is'.
Because, by now,
he realized that he was always so busy that he had never
time to think
about what he _really_ wants.

Doing all this, he has become a prime target of the
recruiters of the
cults and sects that hover over the unsuspecting souls; like
sharks
smelling blood many, many miles away, they will zoom in on
anyone who
dares to start to wonder, wherever they may be.

If he's not too frightened yet, he may trust himself to not
throw his
life away by merging his soul with the desperate zealots of
founders,
avatars, fathers, gurus, and babbas; and, finally, he may
ask himself:
"What do I like and what is it that makes me like
what I like? And what do I not like and why do I not
I like what I don't like? And what is it that I don't
care about and why do I not care for what I don't care?"
And while he is doing that, it may occur to him that
everything he
observes has a beginning, that it never stays the same, and
it finally
ends.

The more he is looking, the more he sees that his mind and
emotions
are in a million pieces.

Let's say he doesn't get overwhelmed yet and starts cleaning
up his
act, one little piece at a time, trying to get 'whole' again
in an
un-wholesome world.

Then, at some point, he may remember that he is the dreamer
and this
is the dream.

When he remembers that, he finds himself untouched by the world,
whole, in a peace that cannot be possibly threatened.

But then he may look around; looking if he is not alone; it
is then
that he sees how people chase dreams that are not their own;
if he
tells them what he sees, he's lucky if he doesn't get hit by
a stone
or a bullet.

Wherever he looks, from the billions of men, he has trouble
finding
the ones who are on the quest for happiness, too, just like him.

Wherever he looks, he sees people hoping for happiness, for
peace -
without ever asking what this could be in the first place.

Now, by this time, if he still didn't succumb to the
lullabies of
faith and belief and of the higher wisdom of the Gods,
Angels, and

Prophets who never happen to show up, he may get these bold
thoughts:

"Perhaps it is myself who created all this?

Perhaps it is myself who causes my misery?

Perhaps it is only myself who can save me in the end?"

And if he didn't get killed by the clergy already, he may
speak up now
and experience some pain.

But if he's really smart, he shuts up and goes home.

-Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.

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