Everybody wants to be happy. To be happy is to be joyous, excited, filled with a sense of well-being and often with new hope for the future. It is a good feeling. But it is a feeling only, so we find ways to experience this feeling. Sex, drugs and rock and roll gets us through high school and college, then later a large house, flashy cars, a prestigious job and a desirable mate is pursued because with it comes the promise of being happy. Sadly this kind of happiness is temporal, even short lived. The house and cars needs constant maintenance and the job requires all our time! And when the desirable mate leaves us because we are always working we might loose it all! Where is that happiness to be found? Where must I look? What can I do to have it? Since we are capable of being happy it stands to reason that we already have everything we need to be happy within us. We just need to find it by looking hard at ourselves, and ask “Who the fuck am I?”. Then look at our life and identify our motivations, and see our position in this world. We might see that we are worthy, and cool, and capable of happiness without killing ourselves for stuff and the approval of others. I admit it is easy for me to say this, I am nearing the end of my working life, and boy did I collect stuff and look for happiness in all the wrong places! I will do more of this I know, but now I am asking the question. This is a good start.

Some days I tire from that fire 
that many admire and even desire.
That burning mission of fiery ambition
that erodes my fragile human condition.

I am often left in a pile of ash on my own,
surrounded by stuff, alone on my throne.
What good is it to achieve your dreams
when you are too spent to even beam!

When will you find time to enjoy
the hard-won fruit of your constant employ,
when every day you must redeploy
and stoke that fire while bereft of joy!

It might be true that the goal of life
is not to collect and conquer with strife,
but simply to find within oneself
that which is absent in stuff, yourself!