Happiness

     For obvious reasons, people use one another constantly. Day after day, someone takes advantage of someone, and in this way, mankind has stolen from itself and sucked the marrow from its own bones only to find its belly empty and aching. In all the years of wanting more from a world that offers so much in excess there has never been a single person to reach the top. There is no ultimate goal. Who was the most successful man who ever lived? Was it the businessman whose company earned millions, who drove an expensive car, who golfed, who gave his children money instead of love and consequently rose to height of the elite? Or was it the poor man who could not give his children money, but instead taught them to love, gave them knowledge, wisdom, and gratitude?
     For decades, commercialization has fueled the thrust towards the "American Dream" but it seems that this dream is one that has changed over the years. In 1931, James Truslow Adams defined the American dream as an ethos stating that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement." But peel away a hundred years of calloused faith and hope and what is there left but the desire from which everything sprung? Is not the true dream, American or otherwise, to be happy? To be truly fulfilled and not just satisfied or satiated but to be happy enough to smile and laugh without cause or question.
      Men have dedicated their lives to promoting the idea that happiness can be bought and sold but the truth is that it can't, happiness can only be felt. You cannot buy or steal or borrow the things that true happiness comes from. We can only fight to cover up the vast emptiness that is plaguing modern man, eating him from the inside-out. We can climb the ladder as long as we want, but will the unknown thing that's waiting for us at the top be worth the struggle? Will it make you happy? Will it even be there at all?