The Pursuit of Happiness

Music and Art, my two favorite things

As of April 10th, my 41st birthday, we have now been in Vegas for one year.  What a whirlwind of a year!  When all the dust finally settled, we find ourselves in a most wonderful place and we are very happy.  We have a great house which has been dubbed 'T & T's Paradise' because we are just off the Paradise Road here in the town formerly known as Paradise, now known as Las Vegas.  What a year!  And so far, we've had a lot of friends come to town and dropped in to see us which is great too.  We are finally happy, and true happiness is something that has eluded me for most of my adult lifetime.  I am very grateful for this opportunity.

Happiness should be such a simple thing, but I have never been able to allow myself to be completely happy.  I just think too damn'd much about things I cannot change.  How the world is and how it works.  These mad political games, fueled and fixed by the wealthy to maintain this lucrative, suicidal plunge of mankind.  I am not equipped to deal with it or accept that that's just how things are.  Watching the political madmen has caused me a great deal of personal unrest and I have truly lost my faith in the people's ability to see and understand what is happening around us.  Most people don't care and won't change unless it becomes absolutely necessary.  And those in control want to keep it all exactly the way it is.

I started fighting authority very early in my life and have never been able to be comfortable under any kind of leadership that I felt unworthy.  That is a wiring problem, my own personal agenda to be my own man and do my own thing.  But thinking like that has created much unhappiness for me, and I've decided I'm getting too old to continue doing anything that makes me feel less than happy.  While my wiring is something I will always struggle with, I fixed my 'heavy-world' syndrome by simply tuning out and shutting it off.  I have decided not to care, to recede into my little happy-bubble and live my life as carefree as possible.  Time will take care of itself without me trying to fix things or inform people of the consequences of our recklessness.  The Great Reckoning will come, but I won't be here to see it and I don't have kids so why do I care?  I don't.  Not anymore, and that is a world off my mind.  Let's just forget about all the shit so we can keep this toxic party going eh!  The kids will clean up after us... that is, if THEY are smart enough to appreciate this cesspool of a planet we've left for them.  But I reckon we're breeding a new kind of stupid these days and they won't see it either.  Not until we break the food chain or run out of clean air and water and are forced to scramble and salvage for whatever is left of this life.  The difference between this day and age and the age of our parents' generations, is that now we KNOW we're destroying the planet and choose to do nothing about it.  Shame, shame.

Tanya comes from the absolute other end of the spectrum, happiness is in her blood and she radiates it.  Our relationship has always been a tit-for-tat to meet somewhere in the middle.  She really helped me get over myself and I was left with no choice but to decide that she was exactly what I needed in order to live a happier life.  But that black hole burning in my soul is a tough little bastard and it takes some effort to keep him down and out.  He fuels my creativity and makes me a passionate person, but he is also very destructive and violent.  Tanya has helped me with that all along and I am indebted to her for her patience and understanding.  Moving here, happiness seems so much easier to achieve.  Tuning out on politics and shutting off from the world was a huge thing for me, and a decision to do more things that make me happy is another thing.  Like painting, writing songs and playing guitar every day.  But the weather, or more precisely the lack of bad weather, we've found has had a massive impact on our everyday state of mind.  I didn't realize how much the dreary weather affected us until now.  We awake, and its another beautiful sunny day and we are happy to get at it.  Its sunny EVERY DAY here.  Such a simple thing.

But money has been the root of all unhappiness for people all over the world since its inception.  We never had money in Canada... EVER.  And we are still considered to be in the top 5% of the richest people on the planet.  We never wanted for much mind you, we were comfortable, but we could never get ahead to build any sort of savings either.  It was just the daily grind and at the end of two weeks you were totally broke and dependent on that next cheque to come in.  We always lived in fear of something big, bad, and expensive happening that would take our financial legs out from under us.  Its a terrible thing to live in fear.  And not real 'fear' as fear is known, just a constant ache in the mind.  A knowledge that you're sitting on the edge, blindfolded, and fate is pacing in circles behind you.  The edge was ever-present in all our days in Canada.  But now, that great blanket of doubt has been cast aside.  Our move here was a money-making adventure of course, so we are making more and taxed waaaay less.  And we don't have that same Canadian anxiety that our roof might give way under the deep snow, or having to fix a leaking basement, or having to buy 4 new winter tires, or having to shovel the driveway for the 5th time this week.  For the first time in our lives we are finally able to save money and it is a very liberating feeling.  Down here our major financial concern is healthcare, and having that savings in case we ever need to go to the hospital.  But somehow, saving that is less concerning, less of a mental ache than worrying about your house collapsing or worrying about when your old car might die on you.  Living without the fear of financial collapse is the single biggest relief of stress there is.

Zuma's terrible haircut

Tanya always used to tell me, 'Happiness is in your head.  Its a choice you make whether to be happy or not'.  I'm not sure I agree with that.  The downtrodden will always be a pessimistic crowd and the system itself is set up so that you won't be able to get ahead of the game.  Life is tough and happiness can be a difficult thing to achieve if your perspective is mired in its stress.  But I'm happy to report that from this perspective, there has been a huge shift in the paradigm of happiness for Tanya and I and at least for now, we have truly found it!

Thanks for reading.

TRJ