The Pursuit Of Happiness
One of the few television shows I watch on a regular basis is How I Met Your Mother on CBS. Aside from Entourage it’s the best written half hour program on TV and last Monday’s rerun provided a phrase, or more precisely an idea, that I feel everyone, myself included, should start thinking about a little more. When Barney (Neil Patrick Harris’ character) was trying to convince his buddy Ted to do something crazy he pointed out “our forefathers died for the pursuit of happiness, not for the sit around and wait for happiness.” I’ve seen far too many people mope around saying life isn’t fun, but the main reason life isn’t fun for those people is that they don’t go out and live it. With that in mind I took a look at my life to see what I’ve been up to and what I’m doing to live life to the fullest.
For starters, I know technically it’s the pursuit of property, not the pursuit of happiness, but the fact that people don’t pursue happiness, they expect it and get depressed when it doesn’t just show up for no reason, still remains true. I thought about that for a minute and looked at the lives of some of the chronically unhappy people I have known over the years. For the most part those people weren’t happy because they didn’t go out and look for that happiness. It’s like I like to say, no great stories start out “I was sitting at home on the couch when,” they start “I was out with
Last Saturday I felt the need to go out and do something, what that something was I didn’t know, all I knew was I was I definitely needed to go out. I called up a friend who called up some of his friends and it was, as the kids like say, “on.” We hit the first bar of the evening at around 10pm. While there we ran into some more people, some stayed at the bar, some left with us. We hit a second bar at around 11:30pm where we met up with more people we knew and also lost a few more members of our group. At around 12:30am there was me and my original buddy who I had called hanging out outside of bar number two thinking about what was next. This was easy, two of the people we had met up with at bar number one were bartenders who worked in SoNo. They had told us they’d be going there. One phone call, and some gas in the car later, and we were in SoNo having a great time. We ended up getting back to our respective homes at around 2:30 in the morning with a great night under our belts and quite a few stories to tell.
A week earlier I went to BED, a club in New York City, with a friend of mine to see Paul Oakenfold. This also comes under the heading of pursuing happiness because it takes a little bit of balls to go out to a show where the doors aren’t even until 10pm on a Wednesday night. We saw Oakenfold, who was great, his opening DJ, who was also great, and a lot of Paris Hilton wanna-bes. The night ended on a bit of a sour note as we left the club at 2AM only to find our car was no longer where we parked it. The initial shock was followed by a long walk to the NYC impound which is NOT a hip new hotspot for after parties. We ended up getting home at around 4:30AM and despite the impound situation it was a great time and, once again, provided us with quite a few stories.
This week has also seen its fair share of the pursuit of happiness. On Tuesday night I went out to the spot I always go out to on Tuesday nights, WVOF, as I had one of my radio shows that night, Hip-Hop Headcases. I chilled out with DJ Halo and The Mystery Man as we spun some dope Hip-Hop, took a few calls and ended up creating an inside joke about bees that will forever live in infamy… at least for another month or two. Wednesday night I had the option to head into the city for a Hofstra University networking event so, of course, I hopped on the train and made my way to it. I saw some faces I hadn’t seen in years and met quite a few interesting new people, as well. Not satisfied with only two nights of stories, however, yesterday it was time for another trip. It was so beautiful when I woke up Thursday morning that I called up my Mom and told her I was taking her to Shea Stadium for the Noon Mets game. The day was PERFECT for baseball, or, as Bob Murphy would say, “oh it’s a beautiful day for baseball.” The Mets won, Reyes tripled, Wright doubled, I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in years after the game, and despite the massive traffic jam that was the car ride home, it was a great time. I followed the game by doing an artist interview and then calling up a friend to head out to a bar to celebrate the great day. Of course, once at the bar we ran into more friends. That’s just how it goes when you’re a social person.
Tonight I have another radio show to man and tomorrow I’m hitting the city for another event. All in all it’s been a busy week, but as Barney pointed out, it’s about the PURSUIT of happiness, not the sit around and wait for happiness. I have a lot of great stories from all of the events and happenings that I just mentioned and none of them would have happened if I hadn’t gotten off my butt and done something. And you know what, even if you don’t find happiness every time you pursue it, you will almost always find a great story.
I live my life by a specific mantra; I only get one life I can remember so I'm going to fill it with as many great stories as possible so when I’m old and sitting in my rocker on the front porch I’ll be the old guy all the kids want to talk to because I’ll have the best stories to tell.
Life can be quite the wild ride. Care to join me?
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