An essay about happiness

Happy as a Pig in Mud
by Ken Keobke

Everyone has different ideas of happiness and what it takes to achieve it. These ideas change through one's life and as the candies of childhood give way to adolescence's sweet looks of love, we begin to learn, as adults, that most pleasures are temporary. Among those which are more lasting are the company of good friends, the adventure of learning, and the opportunity to create.

Good friends are the greatest of all joys and a child soon tires of any toy if not given the chance to share its pleasure with someone who can understand. The price we pay for this company is to selflessly, and without a price, return compassion, understanding and joy. It is an odd equation in which we continue to receive as much as we give. To have a friend, a loved one, whom one would die for means without saying that that person would do as much for us.

What is as true as for children with toys continues into old age with learning. We share what we know not just because of the joy of it, but because each time we try and tell what we know, we test that idea against another opinion, confirming, learning and taking off into ever remote geographies of the mind. It is an adventure without parallel because even when we travel with our feet into a dark African jungle or the brilliant light of the snow swept wasteland of the arctic, we are only animals unless we reflect on the experience, compare it to some larger, some emotional, context. That we can leave messages to the future, that is write books to be read a thousand years or more after our deaths, is the great and unselfish measure of the success of these adventures.

Many stories of gods begin with their creation of the world. It is no wonder, for throughout history we have revered and sometimes hated those who create not just things - the wheel, the gun, the computer - but also ideas - justice, art, war. To create something new is a challenge and to do it, we most often use the greatest tool on earth, the human mind. But sometimes we use our bodies and create the most miraculous achievement: a baby.

There are certainly other measures of happiness, but of these three, the memories are sweet and hold fast, long after the candies of childhood have melted away.