43. A Vague Unhappiness

The way to happiness, he thinks, is this: 1) ask himself what he wants, and then 2) do whatever he has to do to get it. Only when he gets what he wants will he be able to feel happy. In the meantime, he will have to suffer. This is just how it is and how it always has been. And so he works very hard for a very long time and he achieves many things. With each achievement he experiences happiness, but it lasts only for a short time before fading again. So he repeats the process, working even harder to get the next thing he wants. He figures life is just like this, fulfilling goal after goal, and when he has achieved all of his goals, he will finally be happy forever. After all, there will be nothing left to want, and if he has everything he desires, how could he not be happy? But his work never seems to end. There is always something more that he wants, and worse, some things he thought he had attained have now left him. He is stuck in a perpetual state of vague unhappiness that he can neither grasp nor mollify. He keeps struggling with his feelings, with his desires, with himself. Why can’t he just be happy? Why does happiness keep escaping when he works so hard? He starts to wonder if there might be no solution. Perhaps there is no such thing as lasting happiness. Perhaps his efforts have been in vain. As his frustration builds and builds, he begins to hate his work, his colleagues, and even the people he once loved. He begins to hate everything. Sometimes he even hates himself. He believes the world is against him and he sees everyone as his enemy. He soon discovers he has no hope left for anything at all. His final resting place is cynicism, the hatred of life itself.