I should be happy. I should be retardly happy. She is going to be here one week from today. Then the next night, we are going to see them in concert. I am happy and excited about those things, but I’m not truly happy. There’s always a sadness inside that seems to preclude true happiness.

Which makes me wonder: does “happiness” as a state of being really exist?

Every time I have this happiness conversation in my brain, I am remind of a scene from The Matrix, which I know sounds truly odd. Someone (can’t remember which character) tells Neo that there had been several iterations of the Matrix before the current one. The creators had designed a world without sadness, or suffering; only happiness existed for the “plugged in.” But the system kept failing and the little human batteries kept dying until sadness was incorporated.

And yes, that’s just a movie, but when I think about my family and friends, I see the general majority of them, and of course me, searching for this idea of “happiness”; that thing that will make us feel whole, loved, fulfilled, wanted, needed, desired…but I don’t think I know anyone who has ever found it. And like the movie in a metaphorical sense, the system fails. We’re unsatisfied and hollow.

Which begs the question, is happiness an attainable state? Can a person live in a personal world comprised almost entirely of joy? Or is happiness a cruelty? Like waving a cheeseburger in the face of the starving, but never letting them have more than just one, tiny taste? Is that how we experience happiness? In tiny little bites that we cling to until the next one arrives? What happens when you can’t cling anymore?