Happiness is an ephemeral state. Something impossible to grasp and even harder to keep, its presence remaining only fleetingly when it is willing to exist. I tell myself this as I trudge around my drearily mundane life in the city where dreams are supposed to come true. If only they had. The man at the coffee shop around the corner always looks at me as if I am mad, while I mumble nonsense to myself over whatever ridiculously flavoured beverage he has persuaded me to select today. According to the ‘ordinary’ behaviour around me, my lonesome wondering is not the route most people take to tempt that creature known as joy into their lives, but their methods have little lasting success either. Perhaps the great benefactors of this insignificant little universe will take interest in my musings and join me for a £10 pistachio frappe or whatever it is the barista will convince me to buy next week. Or maybe these distributors of positivity will not bother, and I will remain as utterly dejected as I currently am. Surely there is such a wealth of intriguing thoughts drifting around the world that our overlords have their hands full. The people (or whatever it is they are) that distribute happiness seem to have it all wrong. The hollow, smiling people, shells which carry out their repetitive tasks as the days drag on. Millionaires and billionaires unsatisfied with their lot, begrudging the philosophisers and the make-believers who are inexplicably blessed with joy just because they’ve convinced themselves that they’re important in some insignificant way. All these mind-numbingly categorisable people with their varying degrees of empty happiness- and me. Stuck in the middle of this endless cycle. Every day, I get up, buy something from the café around the corner, ponder for awhile, go to work, go home, ponder a little more, drift into a sleep where I can escape the fruitless thoughts that plague me while I am awake- and then wake up again the next morning, still trapped in worthless ritual and envying the ease at which a smile comes to each person I see. Their reckless dispersal (or, indeed, disposal, for nothing could possibly come of a smile or laugh flung haphazardly into the ether) of what in my mind is so precious and momentary is perhaps why the little bliss available in each moment is consumed so swiftly, little left for those who beg for satisfaction in their futile struggle against that looming threat known as unhappiness. Momentarily startled back into the hell known as reality by the arrival of my bus, I gently blow on the surface of my take-away pumpkin spice chai latte, taking a slight sip and noting that it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. One of the better beverages I have been persuaded to try by the man at the coffee shop. Someday he will run out of obscure hot drinks and then- only then- I will win. My first victory against the world. The woman conducting the bus asks for a ticket. My response is a careful recreation of that mindlessly given by every person who has gotten on this bus. Slide phone under scanner, wait for annoying beep, find seat- all without making eye contact with anybody. Especially the other passengers. I slide into a seat at the front of the top deck, making a quick check of the surface of the seat before I commit myself to sitting there. I decide to display my distaste for the probably unhygienic fuzzy material the bus company has used by wrinkling my nose in a manner hopefully not too obvious; my goal being to add to the general air of disdain on this vehicle rather than to attract attention to myself as a daily commuter who through some shocking circumstance dislikes most public transport. This is not ordinarily due to the mode of transport itself but rather the number of irritatingly social people who frequent the chewing-gum spattered, grime-ridden, cramped spaces of the public transport system. These people with their worthless ‘good morning’ s and their utterly futile ‘hello’ s. The little gritty bits of spice powder at the bottom of the cardboard cup in my hand stare up at me. Tiny, purposeless after the lukewarm, milky world they were born into is disposed of into the unthinking mouths of greater beings.
When you think about it, the people around me have as much in common with these- dregs- as they have with me. Small. Meaningless. Only useful while their soul is seeping into the homogeneously fake reality which either exists in. So easy to discard. My skin feels unpleasantly warm. An unfortunate side effect of the otherwise rather helpful rays of light which shine through the bus’s window with verisimilitudinous ethereal benevolence, their irritatingly golden slicing of the world into the bright and the shadows a minor cause of humanity’s mass misconception that everything must simply be categorised into two parts. Light or dark. Black or white. Good or evil. Worst of all is that pairing so frequently adapted into the question ‘are you unhappy’. That such a varied scale with so many factors could possibly be thought of as binary, easily quantifiable, is absurd. Indeed, if happiness and positivity were such simplistic realities as the ideals of them, then their causes surely must be simple also if I follow this logic correctly. As I realised earlier this can’t possibly be the case. Either that or there should be no person who, when asked ‘are you happy’ answers ‘yes’; for every state of happiness I have observed would surely be ruined by any questioning into its existence, in the same manner as the disappearance of silence at the arrival of someone to hear it. Honestly, it shouldn’t matter to me. Myself, I am not constrained by these ideas. But it still bothers me. That they’re all happy in their own ways because they don’t think. They just act… and here I am. Resenting the sunlight because its rays discriminate between the areas of the world it deems to deserve light and those it does not. So what if the people around me are as insignificant as the dregs in the (now cold) paper cup I hold? They don’t care themselves. I’ve already decided that I don’t care either. Haven’t I? Or have I once again convinced myself of a lie? The last time that happened, I was also on a bus. Well, more of a coach, as I was on my way to Brighton for a holiday. That’s what I thought. I’d convinced myself that I had booked a day trip to the beach when in fact all I was doing was taking a replacement bus service to Luton. Stepping off the bus I found myself colder, more drizzled on and further from the sea than I had expected. So much for memory. The rain now pattering across the windows of the bus reminds me of the outside world where a girl sprints towards the bus shelter in clothes more suited to the earlier sunshine. She’s holding her bag over her head in an attempt to avoid the inevitable wet hair which comes of going for a walk in the spring. Or whatever season it is. Nobody is really sure of what to classify this odd limbo period at the end of march as. Because while it’s technically spring, it’s far too cold. The bus pulls away from the stop, swinging tightly around the corner… What’s that? Looming up so close to the windshield? Oh. I suppose it’s too much for the bus companies to train their drivers to not hit trees.
