闲人

Recently I saw a clip where a number of people were asked "If you could wish for anything, what would you want to happen by the end of the day"?

No especially striking answers came, just stuff about material wealth, about love, about friendships. Some more admirable than others. But the last guy came up and said "I just want to be happy. I want everyone to be happy". And I was blown away, for although it wasn't something original, it was awesome in its simplicity.

This young man, wise for his years, had seen through it all. We want stuff because we expect the stuff to help us be happy. And yet, at the bottom of it all, we just want to be happy. Sometimes we lose sight of that. We start wanting to earn money because we expect it to make us happy, but somewhere along the way we forget that and start earning money for the sake of earning money, and always unsatisfied because it's never enough. We try to advance our career because we hope it will make us happy, but the stress causes us to be more miserable than if we didn't have a career to speak of.

And at the bottom of it, the desire to seek happiness and avoid suffering creates more suffering. Although I have said "we" many times, I can and should only speak for myself. And as I work, toiling away for qualifications that I might not need, in order to get a job I might not like, for money that might not make me happy, I tend to forget the present, I tend to forget how to be happy.

Thus I repent. Yet repentance does not bring back days lost and happiness wasted.