HAPPINESS

I'm in favor of happiness.

I want to be truly and completely
happy, all the time, forever.

And I want everyone else to be
truly and completely happy,
all the time, forever, too.

Including you.

Of course, it may well be that
the nature of the game our
souls are playing here on
Earth inherently precludes
complete, perfect, full-time,
permanent happiness for
some of us, for all of us,
or even for any of us.

But we have no proof that it's
not possible for everyone to
attain perfect happiness forever.
Seems silly to just give up on it
without trying, since we're here
anyway. So I believe that the
subject merits further research,
until someone convinces me that
there's something better I should
be doing with my time in this world.

I try not to confuse true happiness
with temporal pleasures. I enjoy
the heck out of many temporal
pleasures, but I don't recommend
using them as solace for an
absence of true happiness.

Many people seem to feel, consciously
or otherwise, that they don't deserve
true happiness, or that someone else
doesn't deserve true happiness.
It's not so much that I disagree,
as that so far my research on
happiness indicates that an
obsession with the notion of
"deserving" tends to function
as an obstacle to happiness,
and is often best discarded,
or at least not taken
especially seriously.