Ah, the classic phrase of comfort! How often I've heard it of late, too. Let's just say that life has been a bit rocky: job troubles, boy troubles, dogs and cats living together...all the good stuff that breeds chaos and melancholy in a young lady's life. And so, as friends and loved ones come to my emotional aid they whisper the phrase: "You deserve to be happy."
But what does it mean to deserve happiness? Do any of us for a single minute think that everyone with good fortune has earned it? That every person who stumbles into luck has actually paid for it all in full? Of course not! If that were the case it wouldn't be luck, now would it? It would be your just reward for services rendered to karma and the world. This idea of justice in life is odd...it rubs against the grain of reality and seems to encourage a fairy-tale sense of fairness that simply doesn't exist. The bad prosper as much as the good and the world spins on.
What I find truly interesting is the sub-concept that we can be destined to undergo pain to achieve the happiness we "deserve". A friend told me recently that the reason I've had troubles finding a new job is because I'm destined for something different. This negates the whole idea of free will (something she found very reassuring): we're not digging that hole we're stuck in - destiny is!
I figure that if we're simply paying off a future delivery of bliss then our troubles are being arranged in some fashion by a universal bill collector...
I only hope my nirvana-to-be is still in vogue by the time I get it off lay-away.
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