The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

We like to be in the pursuit of happiness or eternal satisfaction, we even appear to earnestly try our best to attain bliss but really, we know happiness isn’t good for us. That’s at least what we’ve been taught right from the cradle.
“Second place son? No problem, next time you can work harder and get the first place”
“You only scored 82% in your finals? How will you get into a good college with these scores?”

We’re taught to win and given tools to enable us to win. We’re taught that we’re special by people who were taught that they were special. It seems to be a vicious cycle of premature ego inflation at a time when our highest achievements are to be potty trained.
When i now look around, i feel thankful for the fact that i had a childhood, unimpaired by academic pressures (for a while anyway). I got to experience scrapped knees; battling in the playground and using imagination to transform ordinary sticks into one shot kill guns and samurai katanas.
But let’s move on shall we?

As adults we carry onward the same pressure to perform and succeed everywhere we go. When we eventually are introduced into general society and out of our closed groups, we figure out that we aren’t so special after all, there are always people better. That’s when the materialism begins. We begin supplementing our own selves with objects in order to add value to our total package, as if the objects now were an extension and part of us. This is the phase of expensive watches, over obsession for vehicles, instruments, shoe closets, branded bags, fifteen thousand items of clothing and accessories to match them all. Our identity has now been diluted to being unidentifiable to the objects we want to associate ourselves with, some of us become “gadget freaks”, some become “car/bike nuts”, some even attempting at becoming a library of movies and television shows.

Now if you’ve made it this far, you know where I’m going with this. You’ll never achieve perfect and pure happiness or even lasting peace if you belong to the above category (i fit there too).
You cannot be happy if your identity is tied to objects, or if you want to be a winner.
You cannot be happy if you have the competitive spirit, or are a compulsive shopper.
you will never achieve happiness with your current friends, to achieve happiness, you must become someone you have never been before and be consistent with it. You current friends will then become ancient reminiscent of the person you used to be.

You cannot achieve happiness if you aren’t in love. Although this sounds counterproductive, every relationship must have its ups and downs (a phrase created by people in relationships). These downs are periods of non happiness. You’re only chance at happiness is to find someone who isn’t everything I’ve described above or is someone who at least aspires to be that person.

Welcome to the world. Where we’re given a stick and made to participate in a gun fight. All of us run forward and earnestly try stabbing life with a stick.
Winning is accepting you have a stick, throwing it away and enjoying the 5 seconds you have until the bullet is in your brain.

The Not Me Mes

If Weve ever had the pleasure of being alone for sometime, maybre over coffee or dinner, i manage to fool most people into a feeling of brotherhood and understanding. I manage to play multiple roles lifetime membership in club of wonderland. Ever since i remember i’ve always been fascinated with fantasies and being able to spin a good tale that feels so true, you could feel the fabric of it if you only held out your hand.
To compensate for my inate ability to spin parallel universes, i’ve been blessed with a strong core, that never lets me, even for a second believe in the universe i’ve spun. I’ve been everything from a boorish lad who sits with his legs up, yelling cuss words in local languages, to someone who never uses any bad languange. I’ve been someone completely into high class music and someone who’s into music that is more often associated with the well, not so high class.
After much deliberation into why i feel the need to play roles, i’ve resigned myself to thinking i do that, because it helps me hide. I hate being noticed, i hate being on the spot, i’ve always hated being different. Being exactly as whoever im with helped me blend into the crowd which then fed my secondary perrogatives, ie, to observe and analyze the behaviour of other around me.
The roles i play arent completely alien from my being, they definitely exist, albiet in smaller quantities and similarly, i can never play a role that im not even 1 percent of. Thus to play a role, all i do is over amplify the exact qualities required. Hence, the 27 sides of desmond (in connection with a prior post of me having 27 personalities)
The tricky part is when someone breaches the levels of outer combination of personalities i’ve concocted. That rare instance where i feel i can trust someone enough to have everything rest and be as is.
The weird part? This works for me. Brilliantly.
Leads me to believe my own brain is subonciously pulling of the greatest con job ever by keeping me in 28th universe and leading me to believe im doing an accurate job with the first 27th.