‘Go to your happy place’, the super-slick group facilitator told us in his saccharine voice, ‘go to your wonderful happy happy place and think all your very best happy thoughts to make yourselves as happy as possible…’ We all hurried to obey, scurried to obey, looking for the happy place that is in us. That really special super-happy place that feels so good. We didn’t need telling twice you see – we absolutely didn’t need telling twice! We were all mad keen to withdraw to our happy place inside of us and pull up the drawbridge. Maybe we won’t ever come out again, even! Maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll decide that we’ve had enough of life in the ‘non-happy place’ and we’re going to give up on it entirely. Maybe we’re fed up to the back teeth with all the outrageous crap we’re having to endure, day in and day out, in the rotten old non-happy place.
You can hardly blame us for that, of course. No one could blame us for that. Enough is enough, after all. There’s a limit to how much crap a person is willing to take, wouldn’t you agree? Any self-respecting person can only take so much, and then it’s a case of ‘Well the hell with you buddy, I’m off to my super special safe space, I’m off to my special happy place that only I can go to, the super special place that only I know about…’ ‘The hell with this’, they’re going to say, ‘I’m just not going to hang out here anymore with the rest of you losers. No Sir I’m not.’
And could you blame us? All things considered, could you bloody blame us? We are fed up with all the crap, you see. We’re fed up to the back teeth in fact. We’ve absolutely had enough. ‘Can everyone please go to their safe space’, the voice on the loudspeaker system tells us. The voice is calm but insistent. ‘Please remain in your safe space until the emergency is passed.’ it tells us. Only then emergency never really did pass, did it? The emergency never really did pass and we’re still there to this very day, aren’t we? Still here after all this time. We’re still here and we’re none the wiser as to what exactly is going on. Wiser we most definitely are not…
The chicken, the whole chicken, and nothing but the chicken – isn’t that what they say? No half measures here my friend, none of that damnable faint heartedness here! Start as you mean to go on, I always say, and if it all goes sideways on you then so be it. I wasn’t born to be smart, or wise, or funny, or helpful in any way – I was born to be fate’s tool, fate’s instrument. That’s all I am at the end of the day, and when fate is done with me it will toss me aside like a thing that doesn’t matter anymore. You know the sort of thing. It will toss me aside without a second thought. Fate doesn’t generally bother very much with second thoughts as far as I can tell. Second thoughts aren’t exactly fate’s style, you might say. There’s simply no room for regrets in this imperfect world of ours – you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, after all.
