Happiness

So one of the things that pissed me off when I first moved to Chicago was the emergence of a free newspaper called "The Redeye". I lived in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago at the time and my subway commute to work was a little over an hour. The station was outdoors and had a Dunkin Donuts attached. Every morning before I greeted the Indian woman who served me my coffee and bagel, I took off my earphones for a minute or two (usually - weather depending) to say good morning to Earl, a black middle-aged man who sold me my copy of the Chicago Tribune for 50 cents. "Good Morning Young Man!", he always said. We usually commented on the weather and I would finish my stoge as he handed me my paper. I almost always remembered to grab two quarters before I left, but if I forgot, Earl didn't care, he would just say "You got it. You're my customer." and I would give him a dollar the next day. Earl also bought me coffee one morning when I didn't have my wallet or any change. I bought him a coffee and a doughnut the next wee. and that's how Earl and my relationship formed over the year I was there. Earl was more than my newspaper guy, Earl was my friend.

Then, Redeye moved in, or who I referred to at the time as whitey. A middle aged balding fat white man stood right next to Earl and handed out FREE Redeyes to people approaching the station. This pissed me off, because everyone was grabbing the free paper instead of taking the time to stop and buy one from Earl. This was Earl's job and this fucker was fucking it up. The worst part of it all was The Redeye is crap. It's like a watered down version of the New York Post. There are a few news blurbs, a lot of poorly written articles, multiple pages of sports coverage and a pages dedicated to celebrity gossip like what color underwear Jon Gosselin's new girlfriend wears. Anyway, I snubbed whitey, purposely, every day. He would try to hand one to me, I would tell him "No" and then take out fifty cents and buy one from Earl. Earl loved that shit.

Over time, I moved away from Earl and Lincoln Square and Red Eye grew in popularity. Now, in the morning, all you see on the busses and trains of Chicago are Red Eyes, that's part of the reason why the Tribune is near bankruptcy. The Tribune bought out the Redeye by the way but still no one wants to read the insightful editorials of the Trib writers, they just like the short blurbs. It's the Idiocracy of America unfolding before our eyes. This morning, I passed a Red Eye stand and saw the headline. Big and bold.

"Generation Happy. Happy happy, joy joy: Young Americans aren’t feeling the stresses of pretty much anything".

What Bullshit. I had to read the article. Here it is if you're interested. http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/red-072009-happiness-main,0,7292756.story It really doesn't take a stance toward anything. Like I said, Red Eye is a shit "newspaper". I do have to say that the more people I meet out there in the "real world" aren't the young happy joy joy people this headline lead me to believe, they're quite the opposite. There are a lot of depressed young people out there. Shit, there are a lot of depressed people out there, period. But they're just dealing. They're just all in the process of learning how to deal with it. Now that's life. We all deal with it the best way we know how, it's called survival.

This article got me thinking, I still consider myself a young person, although I'm currently walking with a cane and have caught myself talking about the simpler "good ol' days' much more than I used to, I'm still young damnit. Am I happy though? I don't know. I don't think so. I've been a lot less happy in my life... so that's good. Is it really possible to live in an age when we have access to so much information about the shitty world around us and ever be truly happy? I say, look on the bright sides of the shit sides. The things that are shitty in my life ALL have a bright side. I have a broken back BUT I can walk. My job isn't stimulating BUT I have a job and therefore am not unemployed. I am single BUT I'm not in a shitty, unhealthy relationship. There will always be things that suck about our lives. It's all the color of glasses you look at life with that matters. It's a fact of llfe, you take the good with the bad. You must realize the bad to recognize the good. It's pretty simple, it's like the Facts of Life theme song. I just youtubed that song out of curiousity and I'll embed it just in case you feel like taking a gander.




Holy shit, I just wrote a whole blog and somehow managed to sum it all up with meaning behind the Facts of Life theme song. Back pain meds are making me a whackjob. Goodnight.