Come on, Get Happy

What is the value of happiness? Recently, I engaged in an online conversation in which a friend of mine decried the idea of happiness as worthless. To him, there is no meaning to life, a theory which he claims is proven and inarguable.

Naturally, I wanted to argue the point.

This isn't just because I have a degree in arguing; I remember what it's like not to believe in being happy. I remember the empty feelings that depression breeds so well. A perpetual hitch in the midsection like being caught on a rollercoaster that never regains an upward trajectory. From the inside of that dark canopy, it does seem to be incontrovertible. Fact. Misery is the norm, and happiness is for deluded suckers. From the outside, I find myself wanting to prove the value of happiness to someone who can't appreciate it.

I know that it’s a futile exercise. There is nothing that can break that bulwark from the outside. Only the person inside it can break it. Only the person inside it can choose to break it. Those choices aren't easy and sometimes you need medication and therapy to make them. The best anyone else can do is try to motivate them to make that choice for themselves.

I can ask him why he keeps pissing into the wind if he doesn’t like getting wet. I can ask him how his philosophy is working out for him, if he likes the way that it makes him feel. I can demonstrate that there are other ways to consider the world by being happy.

But I cannot push a wet noodle up a hill.

No matter how much I might want to.