It is becoming increasingly clear to me what happiness is and what happiness isn’t. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have all the perspectives. I remember arriving home to my apartment on the 33rd floor in NYC on 59th st close enough to the river that from my bedroom or even bathroom I could see the Brooklyn Manhattan and Williamsburg bridge, and from my living room, I could see the Throgs neck whitestone and 59th street bridge. And even though it was probably 30 years ago, I remember how profoundly sad I was. I got home, looked out over New York, and thought, “you have enough money to take a private jet anywhere in the world, but yet you are all alone and lonely and don’t even have anyone to call. Who are you going to call at 9 pm on a Friday night?” I thought to myself, “you are so pathetic”. It’s one thing when you don’t have the money; you can convince yourself that when you do have the money, you will be happy. But what the f*** do you say to yourself when you have the money, the gorgeous penthouse with 3 marble bathrooms overlooking Manhattan with unobstructed views, and you are still not happy? That sucks worse.

Another thing about that apartment, I had visualized it and set as a goal perfectly. In my minds eye I imagined a gorgeous NYC apartment. I had saved every penny for many years, and when I saw the model apartment in this new building with the 9 and a half foot ceilings, my only question was how high could I go? So they took me up to the 33rd floor. Actually I remember it now because the walls werent up it was scary. But you could really see forever in every direction. Excuse me north south and east, LOL i was one block from the East river, So much for visualizing and goal setting.

On the other hand, I can remember the happiest moments in my life. On my thirtieth birthday, running 10 miles and knowing that I probably could have gone another 10. I felt like a horse; I was so liberated with the knowledge that my body could carry me as far as I desired. The only thing that could be more free would be to be a bird, but as a human, I had reached the pinnacle of health and freedom in my mind. I also remember walking down Lexington Avenue and 44th street, and in my mind, I had a clear picture of myself from about 10 feet above me, and I was thinking, “how nice it is to have this wonderful body transporting me in this lifetime”. I was practicing meditation 20 minutes twice a day, and actually, it wasn’t a happy moment. I was so out of body and so freaked out that I stopped meditating.

I also remember being in Florida, and my friend I was supposed to stay with had to go back to NY. He gave me the keys to his apartment and his car. So I figured I would go visit my sister. But she was sick, so all alone, I drove to the beach and sat on the three-foot rock wall that you often see along the sidewalks looking at the ocean. Just then, a brown van pulls up with NY license plate. Not a nice van; it didn’t even have windows. And out piles out more than a half a dozen kids of all ages, and they literally make a beeline for the ocean. The older or teenagers held the hands of the younger siblings or relatives as they dove into the ocean. And I couldn’t help to think how “rich” these people were in the things that counted and how poor I was. Are you starting to understand?

Wealth and riches are the experiences in life. And, by the way, it can happen even when you are alone. When you are engrossed in your life and living your life and doing or creating – reading, gardening, exercising, talking to a dear friend or relative. We have everything so ass-backwards. We have no clue what happiness is, where it comes from, or where it resides. Think about the number of people who commit suicide each day. WTF? I just looked it up. 132. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S. Every day, approximately 132 Americans die by suicide. There is one suicide death in the US every 10.9 minutes. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for 15 to 24-year-old Americans. Forget about being happy, how miserable do you have to be to commit suicide? We are all somewhere on that continuum. That is so messed up but true. When you call your best friend, sister, or brother and say you are depressed today, granted you hopefully are not suicidal, but you are not happy. What difference does it make? You are merely a few points up or down on that scale. It is so sad that we have no idea how to manage our emotions, or better yet, how to manage our happiness. No wonder so many turn to drugs. As Webster has said, heroin is “a highly addictive analgesic drug derived from morphine, often used illicitly as a narcotic producing euphoria.” Forget being happy, how about actual euphoria? Who wouldn’t want that? Sadly, I have experience with that as well from 40 years ago. This is not from the perspective of some Lilly white conservative that has not walked on the wild side. I have personally experienced it all.

I can honestly say the best is when your natural endorphins take over like after a 5-mile run which I also did for 20 years. One way or another, we all crave feel-good chemicals. Other than that, there is “Flow” when you are so engrossed in what you are doing that you are “happy,” even ecstatic. There is nothing to get, there is nothing to do. It’s just a matter of enjoying the peak experiences and the flow of life. I don’t care if you are alone or with someone. We all die alone, get used to it. Funny, the Pharaohs in Egypt would bury things or even people with them. But it doesn’t work. Simply put, you can’t take your money with you, and you can’t take people with you. Even back in the day when they buried people with you. And get over the grass is greener. Married guys are jealous of single men. Single men are jealous of married guys. People with children are sometimes wanting freedom and alone time. The problem is our brain. As I said in observing other realities of our brain, we are wired to observe contrast and compare. If you didn’t have those skills, you would have died a long time ago. You need to be able to observe the difference between the speeds of cars to know when it is safe to cross the street. You need to observe the size of the waves. By the way, I witnessed that up close and personal. I was in Hawaii and I tried to go in the water, but even me, who is fearless, saw every other wave the size of an eight-story building. So, I backed off. I later learned at dinner that night that someone the day before died, got their back broken by the unusually large waves that week. Funny they didn’t have a lifeguard. Actually, not funny. It was smart by not having a lifeguard; they were not taking responsibility for your safety and therefore couldn’t be sued. Interesting. Sorry for the segue. But back to my hopefully coherent thought. You need the ability to compare and discern to literally save your life. How is THAT working out for you when you go on Facebook or Instagram and see your best friends from high school at the Taj Mahal or on a yacht in the Mediterranean? So yet another aspect of how our brain works to keep us alive yet sabotages us thanks to social media.

Maybe after a million years of Facebook and Instagram, all of us who are susceptible to being sad or suicidal when comparing ourselves to our friends will die off. And those of us with sweet tooths (previously protective against poisonous leaves and berries) but now lead to death by type 2 diabetes, maybe those too will have died off. So here we are with the genes we have been given, trying to make the best of our lives. Again, I reiterate physical activity and interaction with other “animals.” There hasn’t been a day gone by where I haven’t seen a story of someone wanting to commit suicide but found happiness in taking care of a stray cat and/or interacting with another human being, relative or not. We have all the clues, we have all the pathways, GET on one of them. I can’t rewire your brain. We have to deal with the brains we were born with. But at the very least, stop poisoning yourself and stop sabotaging yourself. A doughnut for breakfast is guaranteed to cause a blood sugar crash approximately one to two hours later. A protein-filled, fat-filled breakfast like a simple hard-boiled egg will keep you actually happy and fueled till lunchtime. A phone call to a friend or relative is likely to lift your spirits. A phone call to your ultra-right or ultra-left friend who is going to bitch to you is more likely to leave you sad and worried about our future. This isn’t that hard, people. It’s simply common sense.