Happiness

we live in a world where the current mentality seems to be: why take a minute when you can do it in 30 seconds? quality seems to have come to be judged on speed. indeed, many would agree that the quality of tv seems to deteriorate the slower the channels take to load. for many, happiness is measured by the number of appallingly bad tv shows one can flick through in 10 seconds. because flicking has become the newly preferred form of interaction. flick through tv, flick through a book, flick your friends away when you're done with them, flick your food around your plate. ill stop, because the word has lost all meaning to me.
can you blame me for wanting to restore meaning to my life. to the lives of those who surround me. to shake everyone by the shoulders, including myself, and say: life doesn't get better the faster you do it.

i suppose this is reason behind the willingness of people nowadays to turn to medication so regularly. "oh you're feeling sad? well, you must be depressed! absolutely! depression! go to a doctor! get anti-depressants!" god forbid you might willingly accept feelings of sadness for more than a few minutes!
it's got the point where i can't even MENTION that i may be feeling any way other than chirpy and happy and wonderful and great. any slightest trace of a frown, and people are practically shoving you out the door to sort out your depression.
if i try and kill myself, then i give you permission to diagnose me with your "wealth of medical experience" and confidently assert that i am depressed. only then. any other times, accept the fact that perhaps im not that happy today, and that this could be for reasons other than a deep depression.
because, for some reason, the people of the world have been turned into a bunch of soppy little molly-coddled saps who seem to be of the opinion that a human being must constantly be happy. who ever said we had a right to be happy?

i read that somewhere once, and its true. our lives are currently geared towards gaining happiness; being happy; looking happy; smellng happy. if we could eat happy i'm sure we would! oh wait! ive forgotten that happy eating does now exist. like the girl who searches for happiness in a series of unstable relationships, pushing away the one person who wants to give her stability. why? because she wants happiness. perhaps she should stop and rethink her definition of being happy. being "happy" is a state of mind. you could go to a hypnotist and he could program you to feel happiness everytime you looked at a banana. surround yourself by bananas constantly and you would never again feel sad. do you see? buy this! buy that! do this! do that! look this way and you'll be happy.

life wouldn't be life if it didnt have its obstacles. making it over and through those obstacles on our own, unaided by science or medicine..that's called living. i agree that sometimes, one has no option other than to turn to the wonders of science. but in my opinion, those cases are genuinely rarer than we currently think. if you're lucky enough to have a life that has fewer than normal stresses and strains, count yourself lucky. happiness isn't a right. its a reward that we earn when we deserve it. i don't want it handed to me on a plate, or in a little bottle of pills. i want to work for it. i want to sweat. i want to get hurt. i want to suffer. i want to earn my happiness. because god knows, a cup of tea tastes so much better when you've worked hard all morning to earn it.