By no fault of our own, sometimes we miss the point of life. We're too busy looking ahead to the future and searching for the meaning of life to stop and realize that life is all around us. Life is right here.
Still, we want to know, what is the meaning of life? Although this is a difficult question, we will not throw our hands up in defeat.
Everyone wants to be happy, right? But no one can agree on what happiness is. George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden both want to be happy. But these two - like much of the rest of the world - have fundamentally different ideas about what it means to be happy. Conflict arises when interests and perceptions clash. Look at Howard Stern and the FCC, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and the CIA, or Michael Jackson and the PTA.
Of course, no one says "I want to be a crack addict when I grow up." And yet there are crack addicts in the world. This is not because they believe they will find happiness at the end of the crack rainbow, but because they take small, unhealthy or unwise steps that in the long run prove destructive to their vision of happiness. But even if you stay in school, say no to drugs, and don't start forest fires, you won't necessarily find happiness.
Happiness, we are told, is like the dog bone buried in the back yard, something to be dug up and found. We have to do something to be happy. But what are we doing here anyway?
In childhood I was too busy playing with my next door neighbor's GI Joes and calculating the statistical chances of making it to the NBA to actually do anything. Sometimes I wish my parents had forced me to take tennis lessons from the age of four so that by now, I'd have won three Wimbledon titles. But that's only a facetious regret. Tennis players aren't any happier than anyone else.
The adulthood routine seems equally unpromising. You drink a cup of coffee in the morning, work all day, suffer through the elliptical machine and a few sets of crunches at the gym, come home, eat dinner with your family, and watch Jay Leno climb over the hill before falling into bed. Then you wake up and do it all again. In the summer, you take your kids to Disney World, spill frozen yogurt on your khaki shorts, and comment on the lovely weather we're having.
But are we really doing anything? So much of our lives are dedicated to self-maintenance. About one-third of life is spent sleeping. Add up all the other random, pointless but necessary things we do - like brushing our teeth, getting dressed, looking for the lost remote control, hanging up politely on telemarketers, voting in the state of Massachusetts - and another third of your life is gone.
So, we must be doing something at work. Hopefully what we do will also make us happy. But before having entered the working world, I am already disillusioned with the idea. Not because working seems like a bad thing, but because I'm skeptical that my job will matter. I want to do something amazing and important, say something original, lead people to truth and lead truth to justice.
I thought we were going to change the world, man. But there are so many problems in the world that need fixing. There are so many people out there. And you can't just go around saying "Don't be a crack addict." People know that already. And you can't just tell states not to fight with each other. Our problems are so simple from afar, but when you look at them up close, everything becomes so complicated.
My real frustration is that all of the problems in the world today seem self-imposed. We have enough food to feed everyone, but people are starving. We have the ability to fight disease, but people are suffering. We have the ability to live peacefully with our neighbors, but people are killing each other. Anxiety, fear, famine, and war are all self-imposed problems that sadly have been answered only by problem-generating solutions. It's a vicious cycle. Why can't we just simplify things? Maybe we would be happy if only we would stop looking for happiness.
And stop living by what other people tell you it means to be happy. Life must be led from the inside. You have to go at your own pace and be on the same page only with yourself. There is no one right way to live your life that will lead you to happiness. If you don't do something, it's not like you're going to miss the boat. The boat isn't going anywhere. Heck, the boat doesn't even exist!
At the crossroads we dance. We feel the music and flow with it. Dance, boy. Go on, get jiggy with it. That's the anthem, get your damn hands up.
