Why I Will Never be Happy

Last line. Believe it, don't believe it.

At long last, I think I understand. Most of the years of my life have slipped by, like water sweeping between rocks in a fast-moving stream. I’ve always blamed just bad luck for how things have gone and how I’ve felt. But I was wrong.

I was shocked to learn that an old friend of mine, who had always seemed successful, was as wealthy as he turned out to be. Once a local man, he drove around like Sam Walton in a beat-up pickup truck. He never dressed particularly well, but his life seemed charmed otherwise. It turned out, he was actually worth very nearly a billion dollars.

But no one else will ever know, not even his family. He willed it all, every dollar of it, to various charities. The man could have made life easier for me, at least. I thought we were friends, after all.

I was summoned to his deathbed by a stern-looking man who functioned as his business manager, like that guy who was Howard Hughes’ closest confidant. Their stories were similar, it turned out. My friend had found him working as an accountant and had hired him on the spot. Several decades later, one of his final tasks was to pay me a visit. He just showed up at my door one summer afternoon in a limousine, and took me with him. All I knew was that my friend was dying, and he wanted to see me.

After a long drive, the limo pulled up in front of a modest home in the country, and we went inside. There he was, my friend since childhood, attended by two nurses, his bedroom converted into a fully-equipped intensive-care facility.

“Why aren’t you in a hospital?” I gasped, looking around the room.

“I wanted to die at home,” was his simple reply. “I have something for you. I’d like you to publish it. It’s the secret to happiness. It’s all I intend to give you. Pass it along.”

He showed me a thin binder, admonishing me to read it after I’d returned home. Then he revealed his net worth, and what would be happening to all of it.

“My kids are all self-sufficient, and they’ll not benefit from a windfall of money,” he explained. “Money isn’t the source of happiness, of any kind. For me at least, accumulation of money and property has been just one result of having found happiness.”

I listened to everything he had to say, we reminisced a bit, and finally I shook his hand and accepted the binder. I wished him the best for a final time. He smiled and thanked me, and I was driven home. I learned later that he didn’t live for another full day.

It may seem odd, but I didn’t read what he’d given me for a while. For some reason I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I can see the reasons for the things he wrote, but I think the most important feature of it all, was that each bit of advice wouldn’t have been possible to follow unless advice given previously had also been followed. One thing builds on another. It takes time to achieve real happiness, just like real wealth.

“It’s important to never cheat people,” he wrote. “Business should always be reasonable. You may feel like you’re getting ahead by gouging people just because you can, but you won’t be happy after having done it, and in the end, you won’t feel as though you actually prospered. Business prospers because it serves. Any business that exists for any other reason will die, sooner or later.”

“Marry for love, never for sex. Sex won’t carry the day when times are tough, or when you get older. It’s never been any different.”

“I think it’s important to believe in a god. If you really, truly look hard at the world and you can believe it all just happened, you’re more of a dreamer than someone who believes in a supreme being. Believing changes your whole perspective. You don’t have to obsess on it, you just need to make a place for a spiritual existence. It’s the only, I repeat, the only thing, that can make you feel whole.”

But it was really just one thing that hit me hard, that showed me where I, personally, have failed. I’m afraid it’s why most of us who fail, fall down. Worse, I don’t see a cure anywhere in my future, or in the futures of most of us.

“My friend, before you can move forward in any way, one thing is absolutely necessary.

You’ve got to give a fuck.”

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