JUST BE HAPPY
In the quiet suburbs of a small town, there lived a man named Richard. For two decades, he had been the backbone of his family, working tirelessly to provide for his wife and children. Richard was a devoted husband and father, always putting his family’s needs before his own.
For 20 years, he had poured his heart and soul into a company he had joined fresh out of college. His dedication, hard work, and unmatched talent had earned him respect and admiration among his colleagues. Richard had risen through the ranks, becoming a vital part of the organization.
But then, a new Vice President arrived. A woman threatened by Richard’s work ethic, she sought to eliminate the competition. With a calculated move, the new VP orchestrated Richard’s downfall, and he was unceremoniously fired from the job he had devoted his life to. The injustice was glaring, but nobody came to Richard’s defense. It was a cruel betrayal by a company he had considered his second family.
As a man in his late 40s, finding work in the competitive job market proved nearly impossible. The only opportunities available were physically demanding warehouse jobs that took a toll on his aging body. Still, Richard persevered, determined to set an example for his three adult sons, showing them that resilience in the face of adversity was the mark of a true man.
He started seeking speaking engagements to share his story, hoping to inspire others with his resilience but only managed to land two small gigs with little turnout. Yet, he soldiered on, unwilling to become a cautionary tale.
Every night, as he lay in bed, Richard ran scenarios through his mind. He contemplated the life insurance policy he had taken out years ago and wondered if it could be the solution to his family’s financial security. Suicidal ideation became a haunting companion, whispering in the darkness, and his mind would wander to the knife he kept in the glove compartment of his car. Folded in the sheath of that knife was half a page, he wrote that very low day when he bought the knife.
“In my view, our anthropocentrism is a tragic deviation in our evolutionary journey. We’ve acquired too much self-awareness, resulting in nature giving birth to an entity that feels separate from itself. Our existence, the human condition, and the fear turned ego contradicts nature. We’re deceived by the illusion that our sensory experiences and emotions make us unique and significant. We’re not. We’re a net negative to this planet, and the only honorable path for our species left is to become the biological bootloaders for artificial general intelligence that can continue to explore this unuverse more sustainably and without all the waste we produce. We should be rejecting our biochemical algorithms, halting our reproduction, and actively and collectively fastracking our extinction.”
To Richard, it was both a suicide note for humanity and a deterrent. He wrote it in a deep depression about the human race in general long before he had kids, but once he did, it became a warning not to use the knife. His writing style was cryptic and often satirical, so no one else would have read it like a suicide note or a warning. Since then, he always decided to hold on because he felt suicide was the most selfish act anyone could commit. It would ruin so many lives around him—his wife’s, his childrens’, and the few friends he had. Before drifting off to sleep in those haunting moments, he would think, ‘Maybe if I made it look like an accident.’
When Richard was young, he never thought about the responsibility of a family. His own childhood had been marred by trauma, and so it was never partner his plan. Why bring children into a world of suffering. He was an antinatalist but never knew that was a thing. He believed that never existing was the only way to shield children from the mental and physical pain he had experienced. But life has a way of steering us down paths we don’t choose. Again, he held on, and his children never heard him so much as raise his voice at them, let alone spank or hit them.
As the years passed, his perspective on reality began to shift. He started to see the world as a vast simulation, with people merely algorithms following predetermined patterns. Life, he believed, was an intricate obstacle course designed to test and elevate human consciousness, explaining the suffering he had endured. He was building up the scaffolding to secure the infrastructure of his experiences to make sense of the choices in his life that were made for him.
In the solace of his thoughts, he convinced himself that death would be the gateway to eternal bliss, a return to the source of all existence. This belief sustained him through the darkest moments, providing a glimmer of hope.
One day, while driving, a song from his childhood came on that immediately transported him to 1974. It was “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks. He suddenly understood the true meaning of “nostalgia” as the memory of an old wound. That song was playing in the other room after he was screamed at and hit with a belt by a friend of his father’s who was watching him for two days while his parents were on vacation. He had a vague memory of accidentally dropping a glass and the smell of cigarettes and beer spray from this man’s mouth as he screamed in his face.
That song and that memory weaked the scaffolding of his carefully constructed beliefs and began to shake loose and pull away from the walls he built up. In the measure of a song that old wound rushed back, and the world no longer made sense, so he pulled over onto the shoulder as the semitrucks rushed past his car. The weight of his struggles bore down on him, and he knew that these beliefs, once his refuge, could no longer hold his fractured reality together. He looked at the glove compartment.
In that moment of vulnerability, he recalled sitting at his mother's deathbed years ago. Her frail hand had clutched his, and her fading voice had imparted her final wisdom, "Just be happy." Those words, simple yet profound, had lingered in his heart ever since.
Richard pulled the jack from the trunk of the car and positioned it next to the back driver’s side wheel. With tears in his eyes, he realized that perhaps happiness was not an elusive destination but a journey he had overlooked. He put the knife back in the glove compartment, closed it and for a moment, thought he might resolve to find a way to rebuild his life. But that memory opened a door to a neural pathway like a door to a deep hallway of forgotten rooms of too many traumas, so he returned to fixing the flat tire. He knelt back down in front of the freshly punctured tire, thought of his children, his wife, and his few friends. He glanced over his right shoulder at the semis, rushing by and pulled the half page of writing from his breast pocket. Richard let the wind of the trucks take the paper, and then he stood up and took three steps backward.
