“Are You Alive?”
I work with a young lady who is always “happy.” She is always dancing around and is overjoyed at almost everything: when we need to stay later than we should and when there is more work than we have people and when we are expected to work on our days off, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah… always happy and dancing. She annoys the heck out of me. I will not even say hello to this young lady. To me, this is very bad behavior on my part. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this young lady and why she gets the better of me so much.
She pretends. At least I believe she is pretending. No one feels that happy all the time, nor should we. We are NOT meant to be “happy.” This should not be our goal.
I, Hylan R. McLaughlin, want to FEEL everything! I want to feel rage and despair and hope and anxiety. I want to worry about the safety of my students and taste the salt of my own tears. I want to feel the sting of snow on the tips of my fingers and the taste of a lost love upon my lips. I want to find desperation in the bottom of a bottle of a rare vintage and know that it was paid for with blood, sweat, and fears. I want… EVERYTHING! I want the WHOLE of the human existence. The good, the bad, the ugly… all of it.
Are you happy? Hell no! I am alive… and that is SO MUCH MORE!