In Pursuit of Happiness

As always, my mind runs and runs.

I want to do something with my life, it says. I don’t want to be average, it says. I want to have enough money to be comfortable and support my parents, it continues. I want to be with Susan but I don’t think I want to get married. That’s just too big of a step. I want to take this new job I was offered here in New York but I want to live closer to my family in California, it says. I want to go back to China because I love it there. But, I know that if I go there, I’ll wonder whether or not I should have stayed in America.

The thoughts just keep piling up. It’s like there’s a guy with a wheelbarrow loaded with new worries in my mind. He empties his wheelbarrow onto the pile of thoughts in my mind then scampers back to God knows where to load his wheelbarrow with some fresh thoughts. I want to shoot the little bastard before he can get more thoughts into that wheelbarrow but I’m not quick enough. He keeps dodging my shots and manages to elude everything I throw at him.

Like the annoying kid in your 3rd grade class, he sticks his tongue out at me and waves his hands next to his face. I can hear the "nyah nyah nyah’s" before he rushes off to pick up more worrisome thoughts.

Why isn’t it easier to be happier? Am I supposed to want so many things that I can’t have or am I not trying hard enough to get the things I want? Am I, like my girlfriend suggests, so selfish that I just keep thinking about what i want when I should really be focusing on other things, like her? (Yes, I know the irony of it. I’m selfish because I don’t put her first.)

I don’t know what to do. But when do I ever?

One Response to “In Pursuit of Happiness”

  1. Buzz Says:

    Josh, I thought of you today as I looked at my March calendar. Your birthday is on there. Every year when I transfer important dates from my old calendar to my new one, I always put your birthday on it. I’m watching Growing Pains right now. Do you know that show? It’s great. Do you remember how at the beginning of every show they stood outside of their house for a picture, but something different always happened so it wouldn’t work out. When Kirk Cameron was working on the show in California, he got saved when someone invited him to Chuck Swindoll’s church. Which leads me to think that you should live in California. Maybe Orange County. -Buzz

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