Happiness

 A Lost SoulLet me tell you this I have been rich and I have been poor, and being rich makes being both happy and sad better. I would rather be sad in a nice bed then sad sleeping on the ground, and I have done both. I would rather have the means to share with my friends, and the occasional stranger then to be bound in my poverty to care only for my own needs.

Now, I normally do not toot my own horn about the good deeds I do, but for the sake of this story I will make an exception. Yesterday morning as I was walking the dog around the fence line I noticed a man going by on a liquor-cycle (for those of you outside the South, a liquor-cycle is a small motorbike like a moped that does not require a license to operate on the highways. They got the moniker because a lot of people who have lost their driver license on account of a DWI drive then to get to and from work.) Any way, I noticed that he was loosing power as he went by, and soon he was walking beside it.  I took the hounds to their pin, got in the small pick-up and drove up to where he was pushing his bike. I offered, and he accepted reluctantly to put the bike in the truck bed and a ride, about 3 miles, home. After dropping him off I gave him my phone number and told him that if he could not get it fixed before he had to go to work again to give me a call and I would give him a ride to work. I haven’t heard back, so I assume that he got it fixed.

The propose of this horn tooting? Well I do not expect others to find happiness in the things I find it in. Nor do I expect them to help me in anyway. They owe me nothing, unless we made a deal about something, then I truly expect that our contract be fulfilled by both of us. Should I find myself broke down on the side of the road with three horses in the trailer I have no ill felling for the stream of cars that whiz on by. I am nothing to them, and they owe me nothing. If my brother were to pass me by I would be pissed at him, for I am something to him, as is true for those who call themselves my friends.

If I choose to help another and receive pleasure from helping is that not my reword? Does that make me a more worthy person then the person who would have continued playing with his dogs and let the man push his bike home? I think not. All it means is we have different values find happiness and meaning in different way. Had I not given the man a ride would I have failed any obligation I had to him? Did he have any right to expect anything from me? Would he have any right to get mad at me had I stayed in my pasture?

My brother is my brother; he can live his life in any manner he wishes. He is under no obligation to conform his opinions to my own, find pleasure in what I find pleasure in, nor believe in the values I believe in. As my part in this, I am under no obligation to accept his worldview, and we remain free to criticize one another’s choices in any manner we may wish short of force.

I am a practitioner of the Hegelian dialectic process, that is, you present a thesis, I offer an antithesis that we may come to a coherent synthesis of our different opinions. This is the art of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments.

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