The Pursuit of Happiness (Patrick Kane)

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Kayleigh

Life

Liberty

And the pursuit of happiness.

Those are supposed to be the ideals that all American people live and die by. Our founding fathers decided that it was those three things that was most important when we were developing this country. Creating a life of our own created on our own, and freedom from governmental authorities being able to act as one pleases.

But the pursuit of happiness never seemed to be talked about as much as life or as liberty in the day to day conversation about our rights, but maybe that's because not a lot of people know what it truly means. What it is supposed to mean to us as Americans. Maybe it's because they preach freedom but don't allow freedom in the pursuit of happiness. Maybe it's because depending on who you ask it can mean different things and our foundation shouldn't be so subjective. It should be something we all agree of such as life and liberty.

But the simple act of pursuing happiness is different for all people, maybe that's why we don't really know what it means, and since it is a right we have we should all be able to follow our own path. Because happiness isn't the same for everyone so why should we expect the path to be too? The pursuit of happiness can be falling in love, no matter who someone falls in love with contrary to what you may believe in. Or it can be your journey through many trail and errors in which the errors hurt people. We can't be on the pursuit of happiness and expect to take a stroll through life, it's not that easy.

To me the pursuit of happiness is this journey we're on to success, to love, to a future we want to be a part of. And we all take different paths along the way, not really focused on the destination but the pursuit to being everything we want to be. That's where the real happiness is.

For a girl who grew up in Virgina you hear about this kind of stuff a lot. The constitution and amendments and the thirteen original colonies, all that good stuff. I imagine our history books are a little different than everyone else's with the capitol being a short 30 minute drive away and a extremely one sided view of how things went down in history. No one wants to admit our history isn't as glorified as we make it seem, but I have no problems reminding them. It didn't take me long to figure out that my opinions weren't like that of others around me. When reading the books we read in school I didn't feel pride, I felt like I was being lied too because I had a feeling that I wasn't getting the whole story of our history. I asked too many questions, the kinds of questions adults won't answer because the truth is something we often deny ourselves. Luckily I had books to keep me educated, to give me thoughts of my own to form my idea of these liberties people want to so badly protect.

But having a mind of your own comes with consequences. Take my conservative mother and brother in consideration, they didn't like me much. My brother Connor was one of the guys who believed girls should stay silent, working in the kitchen not in office or any other major roles. And my mom was the kind of person that believes everything she is told even when facts disputes what she is saying. Luckily their opinions doesn't matter to me much for my pursuit of happiness will not involve them.

Then there was my dad who did something few had the heart to do. He came out as gay after being married to my mom for fifteen years and having two kids with her. He was able to hide his true self for the first 35 years of his life before finally letting everyone know what he had known for a while. He found strength to stop being who everyone wanted him to be and found love in a man who waited a long time for him to come out. Of course mom was pissed off, they divorced quicker than I've seen anyone divorce and she kicked dad out saying she never wanted to see him again. Luckily for me dad grabbed me on the way out and we went to live a good life. His boyfriend Randy had two kids of his own and they were more of a family than my mother and my brother ever was to me. And I liked it that way because they were a lot more open minded and open hearted. Although same sex marriage isn't legal in Virginia quite yet, for my dad and his boyfriend change is coming, it has to be coming or else we failed as a nation by denying them their own pursuit of happiness.

My pursuit ended up taking me to the city of Chicago. Moving so far away from my family, from life as I knew it was hard. But I wanted to get a degree in public administration and political science to become a organizer and proprietor in this city and I wanted to do it at the same place as Barrack and Michelle Obama did it. In the same city where so many movements take place, where someone like me can have a voice beyond reminding everyone that everything is not what we're told it is. There's so much to learn from a city like this built off of immigrants and so many different kinds of cultures and ideas. Civil service is the place where I can do all these things I dreamed of doing. Coming here was a no brainer really, I'm just hoping that difference I want to make, I can make.

It's now Janurary of 2013, I just got back to Chicago after spending the holidays with dad and Randy and the rest of our little family back home in Virgina. It's the first time in a long time we were able to all be together with my step brother Mason going to college at West Virgina and my step sister Monica going to school in NYC. But I'm happy we all got back together for a few weeks and got to hang out. I was feeling inspired to continue on this long journey to being a person people look up to. I've been in school for over seven years now but I'm almost there, I'm close to being what people need me to be.

This cold January day I decided to leave my little run down apartment in the city. School hasn't started up again quite yet so I don't want to exhaust my time at the library already. I decide to go find myself something to silence my loud stomach and a place to clear my mind.

I let my feet hit the pavement as I walk around the city I've been living in for almost eight years now. I felt safe enough to walk around by myself and to get where I'm going. So I keep my head down and my feet moving hoping I can get some food in my grumbling tummy.

I turn the corner to head to my usual McDonald's I visit and as soon as I do I meet something hard. I bounce right off of the person who also had their head down and get sent back to my butt. I let out a soft groan before someone was right next to me trying to help me up. "Oh my god I'm so sorry" the deep voice says as they pick up their phone that they dropped before turning to me. The man reaches out his hand and I look at it. I follow the hand up to a pretty face with a worried expression written all over it. His soft blue eyes begging for me to assure him that I was okay and I didn't get hurt.

So I place my hand in his and let him pull me up. "It's okay. I always seem to be running into trouble" I tease as his worried expression softens.

"I'm no trouble" he tries as I dust myself off.

"My butt begs to differ" I joke.

"Again, I am so sorry" he starts. "I was on my phone trying to make sure I got everything set up here in Chicago again and I wasn't paying attention to anything else. It was my fault" he insists.

"Really, it's no big deal. I've been through worse" I assure him.

"Let me buy you dinner for your troubles" he insists but I shake my head.

"That's not needed. Bumping into someone doesn't mean you have to buy me dinner" I promise.

"What if I just want to buy you dinner then" he questions and I stop.

I can tell by his eyes he was a troublemaker. He just had that look to him where he was worried about only himself which is how we bumped into each other in the first place, and this dinner was only to clear his conscious and nothing else. But I had nothing better to do and I shouldn't turn down a free meal, I was in college after all.

"Alright..." I trail off.

"Patrick" he introduces.

"Patrick, I'll join you for dinner" I assure him.