Happiness or Crappiness? I will decide for you.

Today I got to wondering what happiness is, aside from a feeling tossed around so freely nowadays, I'm beginning to think this is the "norm."* (more on that later.)

To me, happiness is an illusion. Like religion. Some made up entity to comfort those who are slightly weary of their emotional whereabouts. Something to search and strive for in the future, like they taught us all of our lives, we must always have a goal.

And what if you don't want or don't have a goal? What then. Could you say you're content? You could, but you'd be lying. It's hard to be "content"* in a world that puts so much pressure on the shoulders of "the new thing" and "progress."* Always moving. Ferris Bueller once said, and pardon the literary cliche', "...If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it." That's true. What happened to "in the moment"? Throughout school, there has been so much emphasis on the future. But what about the present? Isn't that more important? Because soon, the future will be the present, yet you will be too busy striving for things ahead, you'll miss it and it will become the past. It will become another red X'd out day in your pocket planner. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't think we use pocket planners anymore; they've become palm pilots. (Didn't know you could fit a whole airplane in your hand.)

But back to that happiness nonsense.

Happiness is just controlled depression. A moment of lucidity within the "black hole"* that you feel in the pit of your entire being. Happiness is not an outward expression. If someone is smiling or is "glowing" (for some radioactive reason) that is not happiness. In comparison to religion and it's basis of some greater force that you cannot see, you cannot see happiness. It's a fictitional safe haven to strive for when you're feeling crappy. It's a "coping mechanism."* And we all know, that coping mechanisms are used to shelter us from the storm, so to speak. When things get bad, instead of "dealing"* with them, we now have to shun the fact that anything is wrong and "cope"* with it. And by coping I mean pretend like nothing has happened. Pretend  your son isn't gay and doesn't dress like a woman. Pretend Aunt Edna didn't kick the bucket, she just moved to Florida.

We don't need coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms are for the socially weak and therefore, upon elimination, we'd have nothing more than warriors and barbarians in society. Hard people. People who weren't afraid. People who wouldn't think twice about cannibalism. My kind of people.

When you are in kindergarten, you learn antonyms. Words that are opposite of one another. Black and white (though I'm sure that's become quite the controversy), smile and frown, happiness and sadness. So if there is no validity in the definition of happiness, should we disregard sadness as well? Absolutely. What is sadness without happiness? Nothing.

Then we come to the norms.* One of my favorite coined terms of a "founding father"* of psychology. If a person is outside of the clearly defined, rigid structure of a norm, he or she is considered to be "abnormal."* And by abnormal, those founding fathers mean, screwed up. Some would consider me screwed up, in the fact that I am not part of social norm. I am not normal. And you know why? Because normal is boring. Normal is plain white sheets to match the plain white walls in the masked asylum of your personality. If you are depressed, by the means of any thick textbook, you are abnormal. But in my terms, if you are depressed and have trouble discovering your self-worth and your place on earth, I'm sorry to inform you that you're terribly human.

* Editors Note: Notice all the quotations and asterisks. It really brings out the sarcasm, I think, in the debauchery of the "science"* of psychology.