You want to know something else.

Yeah, I am ashamed of my fellow countrymen and women, and my government.  This is about more than the Syrian Refugees.  This is about the dysfunction in all levels of government, about free trade, outsourcing, taxes, police brutality, the state of education, healthcare, my sense of personal liberty, and the ability to not only pursue happiness, but find it.

Ah where to start, because honestly, I am going to be a while getting this all out of my system.  Got nothing but time as I look for work.  Lets start with liberty, seeking happiness and finding it, shall we?  Yeah, how many people are really happy right now, I think I just saw something on Facebook that stated 70% of people are not happy with their jobs, if that is true (and I didn't bother reading the link), that is a pretty sad state of affairs.  So what happened to pursuing happiness?

Certainly we are told that we should strive to be happy in our lives, but from where I stand, we won't find it.  We are too busy trying to survive on what little we can earn, while supporting not only ourselves, but our families.  Complicating matters is what makes us happy, I think for many of us, it has been so long, we forgot what made us happy.  It is no simple chore to be happy, its not like we can just run down to the local dollar store and find the blueprint for happiness.  We are each different.  I knew a man who was happy with a job, honestly, I was happy with the part time job I just lost.  It didn't pay the bills, it didn't really advance my cause that much, it didn't even really afford me the ability to do anything that made me really happy (it did allow for me to take my Mom out to lunch once every two weeks).

What makes me happy is not having bills due or overdue, the ability to play World of Warcraft, to not need to worry about what I will be doing without when I do small things for members of my immediate circle, to be able to help people, even if someone says they are not deserving of help, to be secure in my home and my life.  If I had enough money that I could get an old "junked" muscle car, repair it at my leisure, I would be happier than a pig in slop.

But, on some fundamental level I think everyone is similar to that.  They are happiest when they don't have to worry about bills, when they don't have to worry about being homeless.  When they can do little things for those in their family that others might take for granted.  But this we aren't given anything in writing that says we can or will be happy, just that we can pursue it.  Yeah, they should have added a disclaimer to the pursue part of it.

I am deeply unhappy.  You see pursuing what makes you happy can often be a daunting task.  One simply cannot just be happy, it is something that must be worked at.  I have no problem with that.  But how can one be happy saddled with debt, unable to advance?  That is where the disclaimer comes in.  You have the right to pursue your happiness, by running yourself into the ground, waiting for an early heart attack to rip your heart to shreds, while you are suffering from high cholesterol, stuffing down items off the local dollar menu because you don't have time to eat a decent mean.  Otherwise you choke to death on a Big Mac, because you only get a 20 minute lunch break.

Oh yeah, someone told me happiness comes from within.  My response was that I was too tired, to beaten down to find internal happiness.  Sad to say its how I feel, but I will add that I can be happy...  At the bottom of a liquor bottle, at that point, I am so drunk, nothing would bug me, because I wouldn't be thinking of how I have been used and abused.  Yay, alcoholism explained in one sentence.

Look, happiness is a state of being, one that can be found by anyone with enough work.  It just seems for many of us, that no matter how much work we put forth, it is an ever elusive dream, like Bigfoot or Aliens are for some people.  I just want to find that moment, like so many others, where the sun shines on our backs as free men, where we not only belong, but we can achieve the things that fulfill us, makes us happy, find our contentment in this life.  However, when you are as far under the bus as I am, and trust me, I hold no illusions that there aren't people worse off than I, its hard to see anything to be happy about.

I have no wife, no kids, and no job.  I see no prospects of any one of those things happening for me in the immediate future.  I am free to pursue happiness, within a set of guidelines that do not define who I am at this time.  Even so, I have become so disenfranchised from society at large, that even when I have my moment in the sun, I am waiting for the clouds to come again.  I am waiting for the hammer to fall, and the bullet to exit the barrel of the gun.  I expect that my world will be torn asunder again, because I know it will happen.  Am I a realist?  Yeah, because on a certain level I know it can happen to anyone.  But the type of realist I am, is not healthy.

Living with little hope of any meaningful changes, further drags me down.  And its not just me, it is many of us.  Sure it could be the depression talking.  If you cannot understand my train of thought, I will explain quickly.  I think like this because it hurts less.  It is a means by which I insulate myself.  If I expect the worst possible outcome, should it come to that I am not only prepared, I am insulated from it.   Something that most people are not.  You expect things to go perfect, its nature.  But if you really look at your own life, think of one massively bad thing happen, or even a mundane thing, you could be sitting at my level or worse.  Where is your happiness then?