Loyalty to Happiness

Today an hour or so before twilight, with the sky a blend of white and azure, clement as any January day I have seen in years, I read a sentence that made me consider many things. Near the end of a particularly beautiful if not structurally vertiginous short story, the affair of a man named Nino was briefly described. The narrator recalled, “…So Nino sometimes embellished his life with extramarital adventures, in order to display his loyalty to what he called happiness…” What sort of tickled or brushed against my antennae here was not the mention of infidelity, or the suddenness of which adultery was brought up and then moved past. It was the fact that Nino had, at least in his mind, remained loyal to something, namely, what he considered to be happiness. And so, I couldn't help but wonder what deep down I am truly loyal to. After all, we all have our devotions and allegiances, be them virtuous or otherwise.

I fear that important matters have the tendency to become jumbled and contorted in my brain like a long skein of yarn can be tangled between branches in a high wind. I think that I am doing myself tiny courtesies, by telling myself I deserve this or that, or that rest and diversion are essential and imperative practices, while ultimately I am just saluting to a flag of laziness or pledging my loyalty to procrastination and entertainment. Not that the occasional break, or binge of syndicated laugh-tracked television is impermissible, but is my loyalty to escapism, distraction, etc., or am I loyal to my craft, loyal to my goals, and loyal to principles of progression and notions of greatness?

And also, I entreat you to consider how fierce and unwavering is our loyalty to these things, to our supposed ideas of what happiness is? Do we treat it with the same faithfulness that we would with a spouse or lover? Or are we unfaithful to good things, good people in order to remain earnestly loyal to frivolities and things that will wither and burn in our wake?

I know, and ashamedly so, that more often than not my loyalty, above all else, and at the expense of much, goes to my phone. But whilst the conversational tide is low I think why not swipe left and right in search of future love, or erase emails so one day before I perish white-haired and long eared, with great-grandchildren held in the arms of my grandchildren, watched and clutched by my very own children in a crowded but love-filled hospital room, I can finally shut my heavy eyes and know that my inbox for multiple accounts is emptied.

In short, like Nino, we should display our fidelity to our happiness, but unlike him perhaps we may consider the difference between instant satiation, fleeting felicity, and true, binding, happiness and veracity, the sort that lasts and endures and punctures evils and overcomes maladies. This, as the axiom says, is easier said than done, but is it not worth considering?