The Value Of Happiness

What is happiness?

I know, it’s a deep question to start off with. Heavy stuff, man….

I guess what I’m curious about is more the concept of doing things specifically for the purpose of happiness. In America, people are encouraged to pursue careers that satisfy them. It is clearly trending differently, but when I was younger it wasn’t always strictly about surviving, for the most part. Many people inevitably end up working shitty jobs just to scrape by, but are generally encouraged to work hard, study in school, and do what you want for a living.

The idea that if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. I heard that so many times growing up it made me sick, and I’m willing to bet many others feel the same way. That statement in itself is a remarkably ego inflating idea. My generation has grown up with this insane idea that every one of us “individuals” are just the smartest, comely and handsome people in the world, with our dreams just within reach. The world’s been served up to us on a silver platter. It’s an idea that breeds laziness and that holier than thou attitude that many young adults have. Individuality is a load of crap, but that’s a subject for another conversation.

As we drive by these shitty little villages, I look out and see the residents, the children with freshly shaved heads (to prevent springtime lice) and their parents out in the fields or spreading grass on the roofs of their mud huts, and I see no happiness. Maybe a surprised smile when one of us American soldiers returns a wave or a thumbs up. One little girl stuck her tongue out at me, for whatever reason, and squealed with delight when I returned the gesture. This and the local police smoking hashish are the only times of joy I see in this place.

The idea of doing something to be happy seems almost nonexistent here. No child is growing up with any ideas of working really hard to be whatever they want when they grow up, with the exception maybe of learning English and becoming a translator for the United States Army, by and large the best job to have in the country.

The little boys know that they will be tending to the same fields as their fathers, if they are lucky, or running the same shitty general store when they reach the appropriate age. The little girls, even the ones that actually have the opportunity to go to school, know that when they hit fifteen the burka is going on over their face and they are to be wed, arranged many years prior, so that they may reproduce and live out their days tending to the family and hopefully only being beat once a week.

I feel sorry for these people, of course. We all do, this is why when gifts are being given out every American soldier is pampering the girls over the boys. The thing that tears at me the most is the fact that by definition, these terrible sights and pitiful living situations aren’t abnormalities. Those of us who work hard to do what we want and find happiness are living in the minority. This village with the doomed generation of kids isn’t just Afghanistan, its most of the world.

Entire continents of people are grinding along oblivious to this concept of happiness.

Obviously I don’t fully understand the culture, I’m a complete outsider. I’m sure there are examples of happiness strewn about the streets of Jalalabad or Kabul, same with elsewhere in the world. But I’m willing the bet that they are few and far between, and it is something that is not thought about consciously, as it is for many in America.

I hope I completely wrong about this observation. I’m crossing my fingers that this is just another stupid thought from Jonathan Meyer’s crazy brain.

I’m also seeing these people day in and day out, however…

Don’t let this depress you. Value your happiness.

And keep on keeping on…