I was definitely a more anxious child than most, but not to an unhealthy degree. Excitement came just as easily to me as to the other kids and ice cream tasted equally as good. Adventures to Six Flags were equally coveted, but these simple pleasures seem to dull somewhat with age like a sword that never gets sharpened. With more maturity (supposedly), more responsibilities, and more tasks piled on, there's just a bit more stress, a little anxiety, and some pains that seem to accumulate naturally. But it wasn’t quite like that as a kid. Not that I would remember.
Life was a simple binary when I was a child, as I feel that it should be for most. Recess meant happiness. Homework, albeit elementary school “homework,” brought on some sadness, but then it was finished and it was on to basketball with your neighbors. It felt simple. It felt easy.
Have you ever watched the Will Smith movie, “The Pursuit of Happiness?” Will Smith, a salesman in this story, takes note of a distinction that Jefferson makes when listing the rights of all men. Happiness is not granted automatically. It is not one of the inherent rights of all people. Only the pursuit of it is. It’s such a strange concept. Happiness should be inherent, shouldn’t it? It’s not an emotion that we always feel, but it comes and it goes. It should flow in and out. There is a part of you that wants to believe that it’ll always come back to you, like a boomerang or a well-trained golden retriever. The pursuit of it is such a strange idea.
During a dry spell of questions during a review session last year, my professor offered to attempt to answer any question that came up. One student, half-jokingly, asked, "What's the meaning of life?" This question wasn’t answered in a single sentence or a deeply insightful quote that left you pondering your life for several hours. Instead, she listed some pillars, it was almost a procedure. it was practical, yet still insightful. It was certainly not the strangest meaning-of-life answer that could have been proposed from one engineer to another. It’s important to do the work that interests you and that drives you to leave the comfort of lying in your bed at 7:00 a.m. Happiness comes with work, but it also comes with relationships. So, naturally, we established how necessary it is to actively meet with people, to care about them, to block out time, and actually spend it with them.
“It’s a lot of work,” she concluded. It made all of the sense in the world. On some levels, it was also very cliché, but I believe that adds to the sensibility of it all. Certainly, clichés don’t come about without a reason. Yet, the idea of working for happiness seemed strange. It still does. It’s not inherent to me, but, then again, neither are most of the scientific ideas that I’m supposed to learn within a semester. Neither one is any less true. Happiness really is something that needs to be actively pursued. The careers and life directions that we chase take constant effort. Relationships take constant effort. The natural flow of life doesn’t always allow people to see each other—work comes up, physical distance starts to form, and conflicts never seem too far off. That’s why it's work, but we love it. We do it anyway and it’s rewarding.
