Happiness

Am I happy? I have no idea. It appears that happiness is an illusion that everyone thinks they have experienced at least once. And once we get a taste of it, we spend our entire lives trying to get more. Eventually it turns into a competition between being happy with the “amount” of happiness we have and actually enjoying being happy.

Virtually everyone aspires to be happy, and it is often said that part of being happy is accepting and appreciating who you are and what you have. Unfortunately, for most of us there is a built-in contradiction between acceptance and ambition. Perhaps we can appreciate how far we have come, but if we truly accept our lives exactly as they are, how would we be able to envision and work for something better?

Personally, I think happiness is a lie, and not just because it is weightless, has an average lifespan shorter than that of virtual particles near black holes, and is most often expressed in dollars. Essentially, happiness is a measure of how well we are able to lie to ourselves. Often we accept things we think we cannot improve and just say they are “meant to be.” Do we really believe this, or have we set our own bars low in fear of not being able to reach higher ones?

Whatever the case, one thing is certain: if we want to believe a lie, there is no one who can persuade us of it more than ourselves. And for this reason, happiness (whatever that is) lies in our own hands.

Time

Why does everything have to be about Time? It’s as if the concept of “six degrees of separation” was condensed into two. Most of the time it’s just one degree. Should have done your work yesterday so that you wouldn’t have missed the birthday party today and won’t have to call in sick tomorrow to go shopping for the late present.

People talk about Time all the time. That makes Time an international celebrity.

If we are all racing against Time, then that makes Time our competitor. If we fight against it, that makes Time our enemy. As the saying goes, know thine enemy. Yet another saying goes, time will tell. If all we know about time is that it will tell, then we don’t know Time that well, now, do we?

If Time is an international celebrity charged with a crime, and you need it to tell you something, there are two ways you can go. Either you can use the preferred method of many governmental operations and torture it until it confesses, or you can get on its good side.

Unlike a regular criminal, Time cannot be physically tortured. Its celebrity protection is too good. But you can befriend it.

Let’s say that Time, the international celebrity and primary suspect in a crime, is free but under surveillance. Let’s also say that you are a reporter and happen to see it on a highway. You want to get a good picture of it. Would it be better to trail it and get a terrible shot from the back or go faster than it and take the picture while trying to drive forward? Neither, of course. It would be best to go against Time.

Generally, the best pictures are taken still. But you can’t stop Time. So let’s paddle against the tide. If Time is going east at 60 mph, and you are going slower or faster than that to the west, you don’t have a good shot. But if you go at exactly 60 mph west, you have a split second where Time passes you and you take your picture. Keep in mind that if you go against Time in trying to chase it, you risk a head-on collision and a lifetime in jail for attempted murder. Celebrity cases are high profile and an ignorant jury can be hard to find.

If you are satisfied taking your chances on one split second and life behind bars, go ahead. But truly, the best option is to go along with Time, at 60 mph east, and take an infinite amount of perfect pictures.

And then, one day, as you are driving at 60 mph and feel completely at peace and in pace with Time, you look around and realize it’s all a lie. Time is nowhere to be seen. The pictures you took are empty.

Not everything is as it seems. It may seem like an undeniable truth that Time exists, but a basic assumption behind the concept of “present” is that it comes after “past” and before “future.” This assumption shatters when you think of scientists waiting to see supernova in their future --- explosions that happened thousands of years before they were born and which may well be seen generations after they die. It’s the past waiting to happen in the future. So our present has either happened or has a long time to come.

Maybe Time is not an international celebrity after all. Maybe it’s just guilty of the crime of using its illusion to make all our lives miserable.