Happiness and Shiny Hair!

I question myself; I ask questions, lots of questions, some silly like “why doesn’t my hair shine? “, others, more existential like “why am I even here?” and “what now?” and with every question, the need to question becomes stronger …so I ask questions, but never actively seek the answers, I never once stopped to ask Lilia how she gets her hair to freakishly shine like that or why I met someone so special, yet so different and so unattainable that I want him with all my might. So I philosophise a little to make it more bearable, meeting for a reason, the great unknown, destiny and other such terms only used in a timely manner and with careful consideration not to sound overly deep and depressing, even to myself.

So to take my mind off things, I hang out with specific friends, the shallow kind, the kind that worry about having shiny hair and collecting rich friends and the latest iphone etc…, I find it helps to relativise on my own life and achievements, or lack of. They don’t worry themselves about why they are here or what’s going to happen to the world if Shale gas is exploited or if World War III starts, they don’t think about Syrian or Palestinian people, they don’t watch the news, it’s easier that way.

I don’t discuss existential questions with them, I am embarrassed, they’ll think I was a geek, they’ll look at me with the same puzzled looks they wear (as much as Botox allows)  when they hear such words as “existentialism” or “neurones”, they’ll think I take myself too seriously, we discuss and laugh about light subjects, other people (not Syrian or Palestinian), we sing and sound awful, we laugh and sound worse, be merry and pretend life is AWESOME, that we are still young and nobody can see our wrinkles if we continue socialising at night.

After about ohhh a minute! I am bored out of my wits! So I hang out with other more existentially motivated  friends, who over-analyse everything and find comfort in learning and using geeky long-ass-complicated words, you nod when you hear them talk, like you understand everything, you will google it later anyway, sometimes you dare to ask what they meant, you ask your questions so intelligently they think you’re debating, sometimes your mind wonders to places and times when things were simpler and choices weren’t as multiple, you continue nodding and sometimes you even give an hmmm like you’re doubting the accuracy of their statement, then you snap out of your day-dreaming through time, past and future, you refocus your dilated irises and come back to realise there is no comfort to be found in the present.

Sometimes I walk past café terraces where people are drinking and laughing, leaving a theatre after watching a musical and I wonder if they’re truly as careless and free as they look, or do they all go home and think “well this sucks!”.

How long does that happiness last? Do we all put on a show for other friends and families? “The happy and I know it show”, or is happiness something that cannot be measured by conventional ways, like the GNH “Gross National Happiness” proposes!

I find myself drawn to the conclusion that only a time-machine can solve my dilemma, that or I find a median or the place where the lobotomised go, maybe where happiness is like a magic potion you can store in a kitchen jar for rougher times, that would stop you from driving yourself grey with existential questions that serve only to torment you and make your shallow friends feel stupider and where your hair is shinier.

The end.

Dz-chick….stealing from the past, selling it to the present…and calling it happiness!*

--------------------------

Inspired by Paul Hawken’ famous (or not) saying: At present, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.