I've never been good at allowing myself to be comfortable. That isn't to say that I'm a particularly motivated human being, or that I'm ambitions or driven. Rather, it's quite the opposite. I'm a simple man with simple ambitions. I began to see a long time ago that I was never destined for greatness. I'll never leave a mark on the world, my name will never be known to millions or likely even hundreds, and the world as a whole will be largely unchanged by the events of my life. In light of this, I've decided that all I really want from my life is to be happy, because at least that much I can obtain. It's a simple goal.
Or at least I thought it was until I finished college and began to see the deeper inner complexities of happiness. For a long time, I viewed happiness as a state I would enter when a set of specific circumstances had been fulfilled. Those circumstances were different for everyone, of course. Some people want a house, a spouse, a kid or two, a nice car. Other people want a powerful position, or a meaningful job, or lots of money. Ambition, motivation and drive were just the words we used to weigh an individual's personal dedication to achieving their personal idea of happiness. Everyone had a number they wished to reach, and a number they were currently sitting on. Between a person and their end happiness goal is a staircase; a series of events and circumstances which must be met and fulfilled before happiness can be had.
In the beginning, I had a high number in mind. I wanted to be a leader of some kind. I wanted to be a famous author, or a great professor. I wanted to live in a nice home, and have nice things. I wanted to get married and have a great relationship, and come home to visit every now and then and have Christmas parties in the holidays where my friends and I would get together and reminisce about how stupid we were as kids. It was all very idealistic, of course, but even with a mind as logically programmed as mine it's easy to get lost in the notion. Especially when growing up, we're force-fed the concept of "you can do and be anything if you try hard enough" at every turn. I'd spent my whole life with everyone around me telling me how smart I
was, and how blessed I was. Every cartoon, every story book, every
song, every movie, every goddamn breakfast cereal commercial spent every
breath telling me that I was a special individual and that if I settled
for anything less than fulfilling my dreams, I was just letting myself
down.
In reality, of course, it isn't quite that simple. As my college years went by, my suspicions that this whole notion that everyone is a beautiful snowflake with limitless potential carried with it the slightest aroma of bullshit were slowly confirmed. As I began to grasp the realities of my own potential, my number began to change. At first I tried to fight it. I felt like there was no reason I should have to lower my expectations, because that only meant I was letting myself down. I was giving up on my dreams, and in the blind world of optimism I'd been surrounded by growing up such a thing was unheard of. There was never any little engine that got half way, went back down and suggested maybe building a track that went around the hill instead of over it because in addition to being more cost efficient over the amount of fuel it takes to move a hundred ton steam engine over a seventy degree incline, you're also not trying to move a hundred ton steam engine over a seventy degree incline. I'm also fairly positive that no Disney character ever sang a song about "Y'know, maybe I'll just stick with my mediocre lot in life because friendship and dreams can't solve everything and I'm kind of terrible at stuff."
Ultimately, I was defeated. The realities of my potential became impossible to deny, and I was forced to settle. I graduated into a field I didn't want, realized that I'll likely never be a famous author, and that given the average salary of my career options I'll be fortunate to own a home, much less a large one. And as I sat there, staring at the shattered remains of my tragically hopeful former life goals, I began to piece them back together into something that made more sense. Something didn't compute. In the logical portion of my mind, I had done everything I'd been told. I had tried my best, I had given it my all, and I had dreamed hard. By all accounts, everything should have fallen into place and I should have succeeded like the underdog hero I was always meant to be. But instead, I failed. So now what? I had no answer. There was no preordained course of action when you in fact cannot become anything and anyone you want to be because you dreamed hard enough.
I needed a foundation to build a new viewpoint from to make sense of this. Much like fishing for the corner pieces in a box of a thousand piece jigsaw, I started to root out the things I truly wanted in life that I felt would lead to happiness. I threw out the things I didn't want and left only the fundamental things I would require to achieve that state of being known as "happy." What I came up with was fairly simple. I wanted a job I enjoyed, and a space to live in and call my own. I wanted a good computer, and a reliable car, and I wanted to be able to comfortably afford these things. Big houses are nice, but my apartment in college taught me that I'm quite comfortable in small apartments. My experiences with relationships and the value I place in privacy and the sanctuary of solitude taught me that I didn't really want a wife or a family.
Suddenly, my pretty picture of hopes and dreams had been reassembled as a simple list of things. An apartment, a nice job, a good computer, a reliable car. It seemed simple enough. The problem then became getting there. Or getting anywhere, for that matter.
In order to achieve a goal, one must find a way to make progress, and the shortest path between two points is a straight line. Logically, it made sense to arrange these things in the order of priority. I needed a job before anything, of course. After I had a job I could worry about replacing my car, and then moving out. When I had my own place, I could get a new PC. On paper, most people would arrange things in this order.
Life isn't written down on paper, though, and I soon began to find that my ability to follow straight lines is about as good as a Parkinson's patient's ability to draw them. I figured it would be easy to just fixate on one thing until I'd achieved it and then move on to the next, but as life went on and my perspective of my position changed, I couldn't decide which goal to fixate on. I spend the most time on my PC, and it's the least expensive thing to replace, but at the same time it's a non-necessity, but my car still runs, and better than my PC does. Meanwhile though I'm still living with my parents, and I desperately crave independence and my own place, so for a time I'll fixate on that, but then my PC starts to show its age again and becomes the center of focus. Meanwhile I'm working jobs around the city, and while I have money coming in, it seems to be going out just as quickly between repairing the car I have now and paying off my student loan.
Furthermore, I've found myself questioning what defines a good job. What defines a reliable car, or a good PC? What defines a good apartment? How much of the quality of each thing on this list am I willing to sacrifice for the sake of brevity or easiness to obtain? Suddenly my structured corner pieces have become a mismatched handful of black pieces with stars on them from a puzzle that is literally just the night sky. I don't know where they go, or how they fit together, or even why I'm holding them. I could ask for help, but what good would that do? Everyone's opinions will either reflect the standard logical order I mentioned earlier, or be tainted with bias based on their own personal views of what happiness is. They'll tell me I don't need material goods, I need religion, or maybe that I don't need money, I just need a good relationship.
Everything has suddenly spiraled into a catch 22. Only I can determine what makes me truly happy, but I have no idea what happiness even is.
Let's go back to my original statement. I've never been good at allowing myself to be comfortable. I'm constantly trapped in a state of wanting to stop and just be comfortable where I am, wanting to settle, but feeling like if I just try a little bit more I can achieve the goals I need to be happy. Every time I feel like I'm making progress along the line, I look up and realize that I've been walking in circles and nothing I've done for the last week has been productive. Am I making progress if I have a job I love that doesn't pay me enough to move out? Would it be different if I had a job I hated every day of my life that paid me better?
In the end, I have no idea. I have no idea what happiness is, or how to get there. I don't know how I'm going to take these abstract, subjective ideals of happiness and comfort and meld them together with life and reality. What I do know is that in the evenings I have good friends to talk with, I enjoy the job I have now, and I'm 500 million points into the best game of Pokemon Pinball I've ever played. Maybe until I find out how the rest of all this works, I should just take the little bits of happiness I get from simple things like these and be done with it.
-The Sarcastic Soul-
