Happiness

In the last week I have been funnelling all of my hopes for happiness into the possibility of buying an old Harley-Davidson Sportster. Next week it may be something else. The week before it was learning sufficient Spanish to teach English in Madrid.

Happiness is a funny thing. Ha Ha!

I was happy last Friday. Ask Facebook. I was happy on Tuesday, too - camping simply on the south coast. The sun shone, which helped, but I would have been happy anyway.

But, back in the world of routine and the crushingly mundane, anything that glisters holds the prospect of being golden: Eldorado. And Harley-Davidsons famously glister. And they throb. Noisily. And one can lean back a little. Cruise. Catch the breeze and accumulate flies on one's teeth. But Harleys take all your money and then some. And they are apt to break down, get punctures, get stolen or get boring because you've had them a while.

I like bikes. Maybe a Harley will make biking fun again. Maybe that will bring happiness where there is no camping or walking in the hills. Or maybe it will become routine, mundane - something to pull the garage door down on and forget. As I do now with the poor old BM.

Oh to be content. But to be content is to be lazy, we are told. And wasteful, too - human lives have never been so precious as they are today. But the very act of trying to make each minute worthwhile, and the raising of expectation that each life must be fulfilled, weighs heavily upon us and may be our undoing.

Perhaps rolling noisily into a quiet field and pitching the two-man tent will bring me closer to a simple way of living and make happiness attainable through prolonged contemplation of a realised failure to achieve. Might piss the other campers off a bit, mind.