“But no one can be happy if worried about the most important thing in one’s life.”
– Cicero
You think this thing will make you happy. Then, you think the other thing will make you happy.
You think being single will make you happy. Then, you think getting married will make you happy. Then, you want to be single again. Soon, you’re lonely again.
You think having kids will make you happy. Then, when your kids aren’t listening to you and not letting you sleep, you pine for the days before you had kids, forgetting that you had a void that only children could fill.
You want to move. You want to stay.
You think spending money you don’t have will make you happy. Then, you think saving and paying off your debt will make you happy. But you wish you could go back to being so careless that you could spend money you don’t have.
You romanticize the good times you had with your friends, but when you’re with them you find yourself trying too hard to recapture the past instead of just enjoying the moment. After a while, you want to go home. Once you’re home, you wish you had stayed longer.
“Basically everything that I had ever dreamed of had come true and the hole was still there, you know? It was the best and the worst year of my life.”
– Will Smith
You long for the past. You yearn for the future.
You look for happiness everywhere — up, down, left, right, in front, behind, diagonal, inverted — but it can only come from within. If you’re unhappy, that which you worry about will just be replaced by something else, which you will only worry about more.
You keep searching, searching, searching. Until eventually you give up. You stop searching.
And, hopefully, that’s when it finds you.
Christopher Pierznik’s nine books are available in paperback and Kindle. His work has appeared on XXL, Cuepoint, Business Insider, The Cauldron, Medium, Fatherly, Hip Hop Golden Age, and many more. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter or follow him on Facebook or Twitter.
The Passion of Christopher Pierznik 