ANY GUSS, WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

After all, what is happiness?

Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield: it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.

All right then, peace. Peace? People say, you go to the woods and you can feel peace. Mother nature is never at peace. One kills the other to survive and that is the order of nature. One chases the other and in effect everybody is chasing and every living being is being chased.

Money brings happiness. Fine. In that case, everyone who earns enough to have a high standard of living would be able to stop work. But then they’re more troubled than ever, as if they were afraid of losing everything. Money attracts money, that’s true. Poverty might bring unhappiness, but money won’t necessarily bring happiness.

I spent a lot of my life looking for happiness, now what I want is joy. Joy is like sex – it begins and ends. I want pleasure. I want to be contented, but happiness? That c an still be elusive.

When I’m with a group of people and I want to provoke them by asking the most important of questions: “ Are you happy?”, they all reply: “Yes, I am”.

The I ask: ‘But don’t you want more? Don’t you want to keep on growing?’ And they all reply: ‘Of course.’

Then I say: ‘So you’re not happy.’ And they change the subject.