I read a lot online. Mostly material curated by my friends and acquaintances. Sometimes I run into a thick vein of feel-good affirmations. About the nature of happiness and how to cultivate it in your life. All of this is good and wonderful and I value those friends that bring those things to light because they really do deserve saying and sharing.

One thing does get me though, and this came up with the notion that happiness is not bound by external situations. Are you sure? I think about all the people I read who are very loving, very expressive, and very positive people… how much of that output is supported by a comfortable life? What happens if you don’t have the blessings that come with a first world existence? What if the water that surrounds you is toxic and if you drank any of it would lead to a slow agonizing death? What if you were homeless? What if you were starving? What if life arranged to punish you at every turn and you could never catch a single break? How fluffy and positive would that poor person be?

Don’t get me wrong here, I think that these people are vital and what they share is wonderful and I’m glad they do so, but, all the advice in the world, all the love and fluffy feelings and rah-rah aphorisms, when they land on the ears of someone who is struggling for the most basic things in life – how is that person supposed to react? Do they react with anger? Upset that people who are blessed with comfort feel compelled to export super-fluff are somehow not getting the big picture?

I think quite often on the poor soul who can’t scrape together a meal today, who has no reliable potable water to rely upon for survival and has no idea if someone or something will end up trying to kill or nibble on them in the night. How would they react to being told that everyone is suffused with love and true happiness is all in your mind and how you perceive and approach the world? When I imagine myself in that condition the last thing I want to hear is someone expounding on the fluffy. I’d really like something to drink, something to eat, and maybe someone to watch over me as I collapse.

It isn’t until you get to writing how you feel that you find yourself tripping over the very core reason why your political views are formed the way they are. I think it’s this, this poor soul, a nameless faceless sufferer that compels me to be a liberal. To share what I have, (with hope that we share what we have) in order to ensure that this one poor soul never has to face such an empty existence. And I think it’s this poor person that I always think about when I walk into the voting booth, and when I look upon my paycheck and note how much FICA I’m paying, just to start. It’s something I cannot understand, and probably never ever will. Why people can be so cold and unfeeling, so unimaginative that they cannot comprehend someone to be in this suffering state. I think that’s one of the core reasons why I am filled with boiling waves of rage when I hear conservatives railing against social programs. How corrupt and alien would be our world if any one of us fell through the cracks and died while others did nothing. If you want to know evil, I think that’s the core of it. Not being violent or malicious, but being indifferent to suffering. By being indifferent, in some ways you are actively collaborating with suffering itself. It makes me feel wretched.

So, getting back to where we started, the central question remains. Is happiness bound by external things? I think it most certainly can be. People should not lose sight of that.