PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

"....black men as well as white men, would be guranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Nothing makes sense to me right now. I'm up in the dead of the night unable to sleep, trying to figure out a direction. Any direction. Somewhere to call a destination and set out for. I'm looking for fulfilment of dreams, aspirations, imaginations. We all make up a lot of fantasies and its amazing how our happiness is hinged on the outcome of these fantasies. Some of them are born out of sheer insanity, some out of necessity and others out of nothingness. We all have a right to life. A life with limitless freedom to explore. A life where you are free to say and do as you wish, where we can act on all our impulses without fear of being told not to do so.

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Happiness comes from fulfilment of dreams or expectations. We all have them. From becoming a graduate, to acquiring your dream home, to having a happy marriage, to managing a successful business. Every individual constantly seeks to achieve something. Man never goes to rest each time he gets what he wants because from that very second on, he has conceived yet another need. Indeed, man's wants are insatiable.

There was once a time when people didn't have the right to dream. Once upon a time, the right to live was brokered like a piece of cloth, made so so others might be able to purchase it. The brokerers were men with sweat and blood just as the men they purchased and sold, save for a difference in skin pigmentation. One was white while the other was black. The black saw the white as demigods, the whites saw the blacks as beasts of burden and treated them so. Millions of black souls were carted away to foreign lands as slaves without as much as any right to their very own lives. They no longer owned their bodies, their blood, their strength, their entire being. All they could boast of was their black soul, wailings of sorrow being the best and only use of it. They had needs unattended to. They had dreams unfulfilled. They wallowed in unhappiness and were even too weak to pursue happiness. For them, there was no such thing as the pursuit of happiness neither was there liberty.

Things are different now. Everyone now has unlimited rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness regardless of skin colour. Unfortunately, a good number of people are still not free. People are still laden with so much sadness and they are totally clueless as to how to get out. You wonder why you are sad and you can't place a finger on the cause. Well, I happen to know why. Search deep into your heart and you will see how you've enslaved yourself with chains and fetters of limitation. You have erected a wall to block the things you can achieve. You don't even know what you're capable of. If one does not have a goal, then what is there to pursue? You days are void of imagination and your nights are bereft of dreams. You may not know this, but you are sad because everyone around seems to be moving along faster than you can cope with. Nothing is going well for you.

Please do yourself a favour; quit thw worrying and start setting goals for yourself. Quit being lazy and do something right now. There are a million and one things you can do, yes yes I know, you just have to start with one. Tackle each day as it comes, conquer the little challenges that come along and live by the moment. Do whatever catches your interest. That way, you will gradually work your way up to fulfilment, and joy and happiness will continue to be within your grasp. Goodluck on your expedition......the pursuit of happiness.

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