Found: One Bright Side

Ever get down—down as in blue, not funky. Not because of any one event or because of the people close to you, but because of the minor players in your life who you sense are tired of you, which makes you angry, which then only serves to annoy them more? Then, you say, “Stop looking at me,” and it gets taken out of context.

At those times, I look for pick-me-ups. A person I used to date gave me 14,000 Things to Be Happy About. Unfortunately most of the 14,000 things just depress me: “dress shirts,” “amateur psychoanalysis,” “’Made in Japan’ labels,” “the empty stretches of bun on either end of a hot dog.” Really? These are the best things to be happy about?

So naturally I turn to the next logical text: Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. And found this bit where Voltaire’s father, on finding out about Voltaire’s career path said, “Literature is the profession of the man who wishes to be useless to society and a burden to his relatives, and to die of hunger.”

Now that’s the stuff!