Personal declaration

I spent today with a friend who I have seen frequently in the last year but almost never without other people being present. This meant that today we were able to REALLY talk, in the way you don't when other people are around, even when the other people are close friends as well. Those of my readers (all of you, I hope) will know what I mean by this and why it was special. We didn't talk about anything particularly private, but still, just the two of us being there meant that we were free to talk about anything at all, and a few bits of dirty laundry got aired without it causing any awkward moments in the conversation, because it was only us, so we didn't have to worry about it.

On my way home I listened to a playlist on my iPod. I have just learned how to make playlists, which makes me feel alternately very clever and very stupid. Clever because I know how to make playlists!!! How clever I am!!! and stupid because how long have I had an iPod without figuring this out??? and why did it take me this long??? This playlist consists almost entirely of Dire Straits songs, the very slow ones. (This means about five songs out of the Dire Straits songs I have. When I listen to music I tend to listen to the same stuff over and over until I get sick of it.)

Perhaps it was the music, or perhaps it was just my mood in general, but for whatever reason I started thinking about life and liberty and what's it all about, and, you know, things like that. By the time I reached my station I had decided that my Personal Declaration of Independence would be a little different from the American Declaration of Independence.

The preamble to my Personal Declaration of Independence would say this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Interestingness."

That's right. This evening's blinding moment of clarity (good evenings always include a blinding moment of clarity) revealed to me that pursuing happiness is just silly. You can't be happy all the time. If you were, someone in a white coat would be along pretty quickly to make sure you were happy somewhere SAFE.

'Interesting,' on the other hand, lasts longer. Also, it is more . . .

. . . interesting.

There has to be another way to end that sentence, but I'm too tired to think of it right now.