Where Does Happiness Live?
7/14/2024
It’s been two months now that I’ve been lying under a maple tree in the forest. I encounter no one, just a rare face coming to see me. When I'm not writing, I lie there, watching clouds drift between the leaves, and I feel a longing. I used to long for the naivety I once had, a naivety so abundant that I didn’t long for anything. But I grew up, and now, as I lie here, I feel it stretching out beside me – longing. I've tamed it; it’s dear to me now. I smile that it can't find a way to escape my forests. Maybe it’s not even looking. And it’s good for me to feel it each time I lie down by the lake. Longing speaks silently, in all the world’s accents, reminding me of what I miss the most. Sometimes it’s silent, letting me speak, and I finally say everything I should have said long ago and never will say again. Days and nights pass until it finally comes, faceless. Until from all the moments of longing, those return where I was alone. Those moments where I lacked nothing.
“If your God descended now and promised to fulfill all your dreams,”
I would begin my favorite game.
“I don't need to know what they are, but they must be feasible. You can’t ride a unicorn or learn to fly,”
I preempt the participant of the game, who is usually grinning widely by now.
“But everything else, everything you wish for, is possible.”
People often start to say their dream, but that’s not what the game is about.
“Imagine that everything you asked for came true,”
I stop those who haven’t listened to the rules.
“Tell me what your ordinary Tuesday would be like, five years from today. Everything, from the very morning until the last moment before you fall asleep.”
Some start telling their story right away, while others take time to arrange their thoughts. Yet each time, hearing the answers, I quickly understand if I would want to visit them on that Tuesday five years from now, or if I never want to meet that person again from this Tuesday onwards.
I played this game myself four years ago. I remember well what I said then. Today, I count the days – one year left until the great Tuesday, which back then seemed like it would dawn not in five, but in a hundred years. Longing smiles at my side, reminding me. Maybe I’m halfway to that day, I think. But it smiles and, saying nothing, answers all my questions. The happiest days of life were neither clear nor calm. As summer ends, it will leave, so that I can search for it again. So that the approaching Tuesday becomes more and more like the one I spoke of four years ago. Sometimes I think that longing is exactly what I once believed in sacredly.
Where does happiness live? – I ask the approaching longing, though I know the answer myself. Some say you find it when you need nothing more – when you have enough of what you have. Or when you expect nothing from anyone – then happiness comes. However, I have never met anyone who has succeeded in this. Someone proudly explained to me that happiness is when you take the keys to your own house – I’ve been in that moment, those people were mistaken. Happiness is freedom – a pilgrim told me, who later cried at my door admitting that freedom is probably the furthest word to describe happiness. Happiness is different for everyone – philosophers say, and they would probably speak differently if they played the game more often, “what would your day be like in five years if all your dreams came true.”
I lie under the maple, fish jump in the water, and I try to write down in my mind all the answers I’ve ever heard. My phone vibrates. I slowly lift my eyes to the screen and read the same message several times. Happiness is having something to look forward to.
I would like to be unique, but for happiness, I am exactly the same.
And if your God fulfilled all your wishes, what would your Tuesday be like, five years from today?