Somewhere Over the Rainbow, I’ll Be Happy
Go anywhere, do anything. No matter what, you’ll still have to make a decision to be happy.
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Long ago, I saw the television series, “Disjointed” on Netflix. It’s about a medical marijuana shop and the lives of the people who run it. There was this scene that I’ll never forget. Two women in the “showroom” were chatting while everyone else in the scene was shopping. One was standing, the other in an easy chair.
The woman in the easy chair took a long drag off her joint, and the standing woman says, “So, why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Smoke.”
“To take the edge off.”
And right then and there, I had to stop watching. If you’re smoking weed to take the edge off, that’s the wrong reason. I used to do that.
I once dated a woman who had a habit of standing me up. Yes, I wanted to get into her shorts. I fantasized about her, I enjoyed talking with her. She laughed at my jokes. I didn’t know enough about her to really want to be with her. My head was too filled with fantasies.
But every time we made a date and she stood me up, I packed a bowl in my bong and smoked it away. It was what I knew how to do then. I knew that wasn’t enough. I knew that I needed something better. I didn’t know what I really needed. I know that now because smoking weed doesn’t actually qualify as a human need. It’s a human want.
Worse, smoking weed distracted me from getting what I wanted. It made my mind harder to focus, harder to direct, and harder to mobilize when an opportunity presented itself. Pot didn’t make me happy.
And this is the edge that I missed. Taking the edge off means not knowing how to be happy. The edge that people take off with whatever their pleasure might be, booze, pot, sex, food, opium, whatever…that edge is the fulcrum we use to decide if we will be happy with what we have now.
Go anywhere, do anything. Buy something. Imagine doing what you always wanted to do right now. You haven’t done it yet, but for now, this moment in time, imagine doing that thing. And after you’ve done it, it’s over. Can you still be happy after you’ve done it? Were you happy…
