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skeptical

But I'm

.

Hey there.

I'm Joanna, but people call me

Jo

.

What's up.

I'm

Jake

PROJECT HAPPINESS

.

Sometimes, I wake up before dawn to

Okay, about me...

hmm...

I'm

20

-- that great

run

let's see...

.

round,

I'm studying business.

echoey

People think I'm crazy for doing it.

number of nothingness.

I love taking photos, writing songs on my guitar

I smile.

I'm a math and political science double major.

hmmhappiness.wordpress.com

& being a 19-year-old.

fix the world

I hope to one day

The routine is simple: earbuds in.

.

with

numbers

Take a roller coaster ride, for example. It’s thrilling fun – you’re zooming around, having the time of your life. And then just as soon as it started, it’s over. It’s over until you endure the unhappy, dreary mundane – walking to the next ride, waiting in line, feeling bored – just to get that short spurt of euphoria.

Shoes on.

I smile.

Door locked.

Ever felt like life was an elevator ride?

Happiness can't exist, not really.

You'd enter.

Heading outside is a vacuum.

Ride.

A person can’t solely feel pleasure and contentment, because there is always something out there to bring them down.

Feel a tiny release in the pit of your stomach as the machine zoomed up,

It’s dangerous to tell ourselves that we’re aspiring to happiness; that kind of aspiration makes us forget about real life.

peaceful

Not an eerie quiet, just a

but that would be it.

read each character's story, then scroll down the walkway

That characterizes the lifespan of happiness for me. No, no one can ever be wholly happy, because happiness comes and goes so quickly. Happiness, instead of a state of being, is a fleeting thought, a quick emotion. It doesn’t characterize a long period of time. And yet, people use it to characterize long periods of time.

But I'm

Just the minute you felt the most free on the elevator, it would bump to a stop,

satisfied

serene

quiet.

and

quiet, a

open,

release.

Just as you reach a point where you feel like you’re zooming upwards forever,

you’re forced to stop and end it abruptly.

happy

Dew brushes my ankle, sticking to the uncut grass, teasing my sweaty skin.

one-strapping my backpack,

I walk in,

hair mussed from a night of no sleep.

.

I make relative eye contact with the others in the elevator. And then I wait for that drop,

Birds rest in the trees, waiting for dawn, whispering to one another softly.

You can never achieve that feeling of complete and total contentment. That is a contentment that only exists in heaven, for those that believe in heaven. It’s not real. It’s not tangible.

that drop I’ve learned achieves that beautiful euphoria of a roller coaster ride.

And it happens too quickly.

Just like everything else I experience – it all happens too quickly.

On the third mile, my legs start to tell me they can't do it.

I can never feel the high for long enough.

It slips away before I can get happy.

That's the part that hurts, of course.

But I'm rational with them. I tell them,

"Listen, guys, you can do this. You just have to get to five miles. You've done it before. You can do it again."

They say okay.

I smile.

People that are depressed – sure, I get that. Their lives must make them sad. But mine really doesn’t, because every time I hit a speed bump, I remind myself of times that I was happy before or that my life could be worse. And I keep going.

The sun starts to rise.

I know I'm happy.

Sure, it’s a state of mind. If I tell myself that I am happy, then I’m more likely to think of myself as happy.

I race it.

Happiness to me is contentment, satisfaction and fulfillment with everything that’s here and now. I’m lucky to be alive. I’m happy that I’m living where I am and blessed with the gifts that I have. That feeling never goes away for me. No matter the bad things that happen in my life, no matter the road bumps I hit, I’m always in a state of satisfaction, that I try as hard as I absolutely can to achieve the goal. I love it.

Maybe my pessimism is because I don't understand happiness

Maybe I'm forcing happiness on myself

But I'm

scared

.

Driving home at night is probably the worst thing in the world.

Night in general is scary.

Driving in general is pretty awful.

So combined, they are the pinnacle of horrible.

But I'm

I hate thinking that I hit a squirrel or deer every time something runs out in front of my car. I hate the night and its black hole that sucks me in. I hate not being able to anticipate what's happening next, hate not being in control.

empty

This is what the sky looked like today. Saw it on my way to my dorm, back from work.

?

Maybe I'm forcing myself to feel an emotion that isn't what I'm actually feeling. Maybe I'm masking sadness with a perception of happiness that doesn't exist. Maybe I do it to be in denial of my sadness.

Questions always

?

Stopped texting to look up and notice it.

Am I good enough?

.

?

Diligent enough?

fly through my head

It's not sophisticated to be happy.

That much I know. Think about films, songs, other art. Being happy is too simple, too common to be regarded as a serious emotion. People are sick of happiness and wanted something darker. Maybe I'm a happiness hipster because I take that view. And maybe I'm stopping myself from feeling happiness.

?

It’s like,

?

Funny?

what

What would cause the sky to look that way?

?

?

Patient enough?

It was fleeting.

?

Pretty?

?

Anna

Am I smart?

.

as streetlights blur past me when I'm night-driving.

In a couple hours, it was back to normal.

I'm

Hi.

?

Do people like me?

Back to the glossy blackness

?

that envelops night.

I wonder sometimes if I'm

19

too afraid

.

I sat down to watch some

Netflix

Tyler

.

Hey. My name's

Typical Sunday night.

movies

Went to the

.

Something about a

A communications major.

dog

man

.

and his

to let myself feel good things. Too afraid that after the good feelings are gone, the bad ones will crush me too deeply. Because sometimes at night, with the windows down and the crickets chirping,

I laughed like I always do.

But when I left the theater, I started thinking of all the things I still had to do. Dishes. Bills. Work. Cleaning. My usual brain tried to wipe those thoughts away, to think about something pleasant. But my heart stopped my brain. And I thought. And I felt. And I became less stressed.

Curled up in my red beanbag while my roommate

The movie sucked. Horrible cinematography. Further, it reminded me why happiness in films is a horrible feeling. It's superficial! Of course the man and his dog were happy together. But will they be in a perpetual never-ending nature of happiness? No, not at all! In fact, they have so many bumps in the road before getting back to happiness again. It's so surface-level to assume that everything is 100% great. It never is. There are always several layers of more complex and interesting emotions underneath to explore, rather than the mundane.

21

.

I'm

I'd always envied my sister. She was the older one, the prettier one, the seemingly happier one. When she killed herself, I was in shock for a year. I couldn't talk to anyone. No one had seen her suicide coming. She seemed so wholly happy one day, the next, not at all.

I once went fishing with my dad. The water was blue, so clear that morning. I never saw my dad as a kid, so it was special. We had tons of fun. Then I got home and my dad suddenly said he had to go. I said, but Dad, what about the trout we caught? He said, keep it, son. Never saw him again. Strange how the happiest day of your life can also be the saddest.

so

happiness

long-term

true

can't be reached.

fulfilling

for a long period of time

perpetually happy

One can't be

[though bursts of happy feelings are possible]

with cliche connotations,

happiness is

for one word

multi-formed

multi-faceted

multi-layered

making its true nature

elusive

I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at 11, but I'd felt that way my entire life: afraid of relationships, a constant fear of being happy, losing control just a little bit. There was no real reason. Just a lot of real effects.

My uncle would take me to do the most fun things. Rock climbing, caves, zoos, amusement parks, beaches. Then him and my mom got in a fight. They don't talk anymore. My childhood was filled with over-the-top extremely fun memories. I've never laughed so hard in my life. Maybe coming from that background, it's hard for any event to top that pure, honest fun and make me happy.

driving isn't so bad.

stuffed his face with Cheetos

The movie was only okay. One of those sappy dog stories, you know. It entertained me for a couple hours. It entertained my wallet when I had to unload the cash for the flick. But other than taking me away for a few hours, no, I wasn't lifted out of my state into perpetual happiness.

He licked that orangey sticky stuff off his fingers.

One by one.

That movie didn't make me happy, I don't think. It just reminded me of the not great - horrible - situation I'm in. I think that's the funny thing about happiness: it's envy, too. We all want what we can't have and when we finally obtain what appears to be someone else's happiness, of course we aren't satisfied, you know? Happiness is situational and depends on the person's interpretation of it. I think it varies on a person-by-person basis.

.

Curious,

I need to, like, open up. I guess I need to feel happiness the way I should. I need to be okay being vulnerable and accepting bad things when they happen. I need to do this.

I'm studying engineering.

I hope to be an engineer for somewhere

I thought about nothing, staring at the opening credits to Scrubs playing on my laptop.

cool

someday, like at

Isn't that the norm, after all? Aren't we supposed to be happy? Isn't the meaning of life to be forever in search of the pursuit of happiness? Isn't that why we do the stuff we do?

Maybe I'm weird. But I can't ever remember feeling that kind of happy. Maybe something's wrong with me.

shy,

Except I wondered why it is that life feels like it's

Disney World

.

always squirming out of your hands,

too quick to catch.

casual.

But I'll probably end up in the med industry

Scrubs was too short that night.

So was that bright flashy sky.

or something

.

Usual traits.

Maybe feeling happy will make me less anxious

Oh well.

I like to read. Love Jane Austen.

I do

Maybe I'm supposed to be happy

yoga

in my free time.

God

.

I love

Don’t doubt me; I know it’s possible. Some people are born without other genes and chromosomes and stuff. I think mine was happiness.

I don’t exactly have the most conventional definition of happiness. Balloons with smiley faces are nice, and so are trampolines, and snow days, and hearing a favorite song on the radio. All great things.

I have no inner beauty. I work at a beauty salon, making other beautiful but forgetting about myself. My figure is ugly. My face is a blob. I feel like I’m a stick without life. At least, that’s how I think of myself.

Happiness, at this point, is something I don’t really know how to feel, just because I’ve never seen it last before, really sustain itself. Never felt it before. I wish I knew how.

But I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy.

Maybe I should explain

Not that I don’t have a good life – I totally do. Parents that are nice, a sweet big brother, great friends. Personal successes.

But all good things must end, naturally. Something about that seems superficial to me. You can’t call yourself a happy person if you’ve only experienced short spurts of it. That’s not long enough to fully characterize yourself as happy, you know?

I think I’m too afraid to be happy.

Happiness takes vulnerability. I can't even describe - it takes the will to open up to others, the awareness that no matter how good we feel right now, that good feeling won’t last. Everything is only temporary, I guess.

I think I was born

without the

happy gene.

Maybe happiness is solely a state of mind. Maybe you have to convince yourself sometimes that you are happy, that things are working in your favor, to feel as they really are. You’re lying to yourself if you do that, though.

And finally, happiness letting go of control and being able to feel things, to let your hair down and experience and really live, I think. I haven’t done that. I can’t do that.

I believe that I’ve experienced those euphoric moments – sure I have. Every person has. But do I believe that I’ve experienced sustained pleasure over a relatively long period of time? Nah, not really. Not ever.

Happiness - it's so hard to describe - it means self-security, self-confidence. Those are things that don’t come to those that are scared or fearful. They require complete commitment, a full idea of your own inner beauty.

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