Inkless

“We wake up every morning with a list a mile long and maybe we spend our lives making those wishes come true. Just because we want them doesn’t mean we need them to be happy.” (S01E06 Pushing Daisies)

This has come to be a very mundane quote. It has been put more eloquently, with more high-brow vocabulary and from more notable mouths than Lee Pace. But its importance and potency stands, perhaps even more so in this colloquial, banal adaptation.

Sometimes, we all need to refocus and collect ourselves. This is a viable and important question to ask, honestly and often. Are we just checking off the wishes on our list, or truly looking for sustainable happiness? In an effort to be more optimistic, I will just skip the bashing of the endless commodity driven lives I see everyday at Cal and focus on where I’m at.

Things I want to be happy:

1. Tanabe Touring Medallion Exhaust for the Evo
2. Do-Luck style front carbon fiber lip for Evo
3. APS BOV, Works Drop-In Filter and reflash
4. Timbuk2 Medium Laptop Messenger Bag
5. Nintendo DS!
6. Subscription to Top Gear Magazine (!!)

Things I need to be happy:

1. Giving and sharing happiness

The first list isn’t sin. It just needs perspective. It is so easily to fall on this path of jumping from one purchase to another as a means of happiness. I know I do it. However, like meeting friends at drunken college bashes, it is very brittle. Such happiness is insubstantial and wears away quickly. I find that they are much better as seasonings to a much stronger, core sense of happiness derived from the second list.

Like the happiness derives from family rather than from the presents during the giving Holidays, this weighty happiness is so valuable in life. For me, the thing that has made me so very happy during the last few days is this blog: http://tomsshoedrop.blogspot.com/

I worked with TOMS in the summer and to know that my work is paying off in the form of bringing happiness to children in Africa is extremely uplifting. It reminds me that I have the luxury of having my basic needs taken care of so I can write this otherwise unimportant blog about the need for more substantial happiness.

As for fulfilling that latter list (of one item), it does come in many forms I believe. One of those ways is through cause-driven work with clubs and companies. However, since only one of my clubs has an immediate human element, it is hard for me to find that happiness solely through my work. I find myself struggling some days to find this foundation in my life.

Even so, I am not afraid. I know it’ll come eventually. In the end, it will have to be a person, someone I can share happiness with and simply give a part of myself to. I am not in too much of a rush though, there is much to be done in all the other fronts of life as well.

Maybe I’m being too naive with my perception of human relationships. However, I really do believe in happiness being found in relationships rather than in a certain income level. They are sustainable, substantial and evolving whereas a number is simply a launch pad to another bigger number.

So I celebrate the little triumphs in life and in happiness. I smile knowing that a child in Africa has shoes on his little feet because I helped sell those shoes. I smile knowing it is the first act of kindness he has experienced in his life – the first expression of shared happiness. I hope this changes things, even if for a while.

The end of that episode of Pushing Daisies asks: “What do you need to be happy?”

In the dreamland that is television the answer from the guy protagonist to the girl protagonist is “you.” I bet in the mire of happiness that is life, the answer is not far off.

‘Tis all.