The Highway to Happiness

i have been wondering about my path to happiness for sometime now, and i've even done a bit of soul searching on the way. if i'd known the answer would have been placed in my hand on the corner of dearborn and adams, i would never have spent all those nights wondering.

normally, i dont accept things people try to put in my hands on the street. i believe it encourages them to do something that i find both annoying and wasteful. (the recent jesus checklist is a noted exception to this rule. but, in my defense, those people were standing on the corner where i had to wait for five minutes for the bus. what was i supposed to do?) anyway, i recently accepted propaganda on the street, without really knowing it. i was fixated on the anti-war protest between the post office and the federal building, the protest with more police officers than protesters. so fixated was i by the line of police officers on horse back neatly in a row that i didnt even notice when a sly individual slipped a copy of the way to happiness in my hand.

so, i took the literature. and when i got on the bus, i was delighted to discover that this was not in fact another piece of jesus material. rather, it was a guide to happiness. i began to flip the pages, and in them i found such fabulous advice as "do not murder" and "do not do anything illegal." there were some less obvious ones like "be competent" and "practice good oral hygiene." the absurdity of the categories is not what facinated me most about this book...the fact that it included nearly 50 footnotes intended to define such works as "happiness" and "industrious" for the reader did however make it most enjoyable.

now i know what i was missing in that class called happiness: "a condition or state of well being, contentment, pleasure; joyful, cheeful, untroubled existence; the reaction of having nice things happen to one." all of this brought to me by one mr. l. ron hubbard and the church of scientology.