“Truth in Happiness,” Poem by Ethan Geiger

Truth in Happiness

Poem by Ethan Geiger

We all know those happy feelings, romanticized in every novel, flashed in Front of your face with every movie.

What’s happiness? Personally, I think I know. But that’s the thing?

What is happiness?

I know what it feels like not to be sad, I understand the idea of happiness.

But am I just love struck and the concept of overwhelming joy? Or is the Lack of sadness truly the same rush of dopamine that makes me feel.

You just feel.

Existing.

I am trapped in an inescapable prison of simply just existing.

I

just don’t understand

Maybe I’m suffering from some illness that makes me feel empty, but

I feel fine. I feel fine. I’m not sad, or angry, about it. I just don’t remember ever

experiencing that child-like joy that I only sometimes get when nostalgia rushes back to me. Yet that remembrance of joy makes me then feel bad- like I’m missing out on the very joy my life was built on. I now find myself asking, did it ever exist in the first place?

Or is nostalgia just a blinding flash that makes me long for a feeling that never once existed?

I cannot say, I am unsure. Maybe I’m just thinking about it all too hard. Maybe that immense emotion: happiness, sits on its throne and remains unnoticed, maybe it is such a great joy that you only experience it at the moment, that it dissipates without acknowledgment. Even without having become aware of the joy I wish to feel: I am content. I am perfectly fine with everything how it is. I don’t wish for change.

Nowadays, I don’t often find myself wishing for that same child-like joy the same way I used to.

I have come to terms with having lost that feeling, and since I feel fine- I am fine- I am content. And if I were to die in some freak accident today, I would die without regret, for I am happy with where I am, and I am happy with life- that’s not a death plea. I want to live, but I think I’ve done enough for my life to have been worth something. So maybe, within the most obscure use of the word.

I am happy.