A lot has been said a about happiness, and none of it seem to be particularly cheerful.
Most great thinkers believed that happiness and luck are two forces that are invariably tied to one another, and as such, they are as fickle as they are brittle.
Plato, for example, said that happiness can only be achieved by being virtuous and fulfilling one's civic duty. One look at your local DMV would tell you that no-one there is particularly happy to fulfill their civic duty, so Plato can go suck it for all we care.
St. Augustine of Hippo was famously quoted with saying that true happiness comes from giving your life to the service of God, for it is truly the truest form of love. We tried reaching God for comments, but God seems to be sending us to voicemail. As such, we cannot state that this is particularly true.
Advocating for a more pragmatic approach, Michel de Montaigne stated that happiness is not a state of being, but little subjective moments in life that one must strive for.
We don't have to go that far to find an even more pragmatic approach, as Sagittarius Æ's chief scientist—Ilfort the Wise—once said that happiness is constantly pushing the orgasm button in your exo-suit over and over again until your brain literally fries from pleasure. He was also the inventor of said orgasm button, so he might've been a bit biased.
Of course, those answers only apply if you believe that happiness is something that actually exists, and not merely a trick of the brain to make this everlasting merry-go-round of feces that is life be moderately more tolerable. For that particular view on happiness, we must seek out the most cheerful nihilist philosophy has to offer: Blaise Pascal.
He was a hunchback, incredibly prone to sickness, and a mathematician to boot, so he might've been a bit biased towards unhappiness. After a near-death experience, he began fiddling with philosophy, releasing his most famous book, the Pensées, as a treatise on why life sucks, especially if you are a sickly, hunchbacked mathematician.
He stated that happiness is an illusion—a mere misdirection to distract us from the misery of everyday existence. Boredom, in particular, was a subject he tackled with extreme prejudice, saying that we mix up being busy with being happy, as it distracts us from thinking about how unhappy we actually are.
One of his most accurate and poignant quotes is perhaps the greatest summary of this particular brand of philosophy: "All of man's unhappiness comes from his inability to stay peacefully alone in his room."
If you have ever traveled in some sort of public transportation system, you might find this statement to be terrifyingly accurate.
A person who would've agreed with Pascal on this point was James Truman-Conelly, who had found himself to be very unhappy with his inability to be peacefully alone in his room.
But it wasn't that he was bored and wanted a distraction—he loved to be in his office on 715 East Street, thank you very much. His unhappiness stemmed from the fact that he could not stay there much longer, since doom was sure to come, as soon as doom could figure out how to navigate the vertical maze that was 715 East Street.
The lights in his office were turned off, and the man himself was cowering under his desk while anxiously licking a decidedly empty packet of ketchup. He was so tense that even the slightest sound could've made him jump on the spot, which his phone was kind enough to show us in action.
His generic ringtone rang and rung around the room, making the man panic so much that his cocobolo desk toppled over. He was very much on edge, and sudden narrative alliterations were not helping him at all.
"What? Who?" he said to his phone. But his phone didn't answer, which was very rude on its part. He then decided to take the call, waiting to receive an answer to the two questions that had plagued him for the last second and a half.
"Fat man," said a distinct Russian/Italian voice. "Am Massimo!"
"Can it wait?" said James Truman-Conelly, covering the auricular of his phone to muffle the sound. "I'm kind of in the middle of something."
"No can," said Massimo. "Need give words to fat man."
James Truman-Conelly scooted towards the window, dragging the curtains down as slowly as he could. "Okay, make it fast."
"Does fat man hired other assassins for giving Peter the death?" asked Massimo. "For because it is rude."
"What? That's crazy!" said James Truman-Conelly. "You're speaking crazy!"
"See, do not have Massimo as fool," said Massimo. "Massimo does not dance and have happy fool song."
When the curtains were lowered to their maximum capacity, James Truman-Conelly felt confident that he could stand up without being seen. "Look, what makes you say that? And is Peter dead?"
"Yes," said Massimo. "Or no. Depends in path. Massimo got Radical ending. Made sick kickflip."
"Stick to the cannon," said James Truman-Conelly. He could hear Massimo take a deep breath, saying everything in a single breath.
"Massimo watch bullet hit tank with fish man on stage, and found vegan killer had try killed Peter. Massimo punch vegan on throat, but lose Peter. Then Massimo run a lot, found Peter making human bonfire with wine. Everything is fire! But Massimo are hound chasing prey, and run through fire and flames, like metal song. Fire burns costume and Peter saw Massimo and throw the danger noodle at Massimo. At first very fierce, but now is friend! Massimo names it Severus Snake in honor of favorite Harry Potter character. Peter got away, though."
"Peter escaped?" asked James Truman-Conelly. "How hard is it to kill a suicidal douchebag?"
"Very much!" said Massimo. "Lawyer man are slippery, like frozen lake, if lake have cancer and full of booze. But still, fat man no answer Massimo question."
It was bad. It was all so very bad. Even Pascal would've seen James Truman-Conelly's situation and given him a reassuring pat on the back, but only if that pat on the back would've helped him jump of a sharp ledge.
"Look," said James Truman-Conelly as he grabbed the crocodile head symbolizing his religious fidelity from the sea of rubbish in his office, "I hired you to kill him as soon as possible, and that was two weeks ago. I need him dead, and I need it now! If you can't to it, don't blame me if I hire someone who can."
There was a brief moment of silence from the other side of the phone, followed by a big "Ooof" from Massimo.
"What?" asked James Truman-Conelly, stuffing a bunch of stuff from his desk into the crocodile's mouth. He had to get away from there, and fast.
"Fat man speaks meanness," said Massimo. "Thought fat man trust Massimo. Now heart is broken."
"Look, I just need him dead so I can cash in his money," said James Truman-Conelly.
"Why fat man in rush? Hears panic in fat voice," said Massimo.
Slowly and steady, James Truman-Conelly approached the window, opening the curtains a smidge to look outside.
Down in the courtyard, right where the beheaded statue of Hephaestus was, a veritable army of fast food workers was preparing to invade the building at any moment. They were wielding whisks, spatulas, and frying baskets. In the middle of it all, sitting on a folding chair and wielding a spiked baseball bat, was a red-haired girl with braids, freckles, and a striped blue-and-white dress. She looked particularly pissed, with a seething aura of violent calm to her.
She was waiting for his prey to appear, like a natural-born hunter.
"Let's just say that I owe a lot of money to some very dangerous people," said James Truman-Conelly as he closed the curtains again. "You better hurry up and kill him before somebody else does."
"If fat man tries screw up with Massi-," the assassin began to say, but the call was suddenly cut off without explanation.
"What?" said James Truman-Conelly as he tried to call Massimo again, but the call was denied.
He had a choice to make. He could trust Massimo to carry out the job—which had been proved to be useless so far—or hire another assassin, risking the ire of the one-eyed Russian/Italian.
"Always bet on safe," he whispered, opening up the Craigslist page on his phone.
"Attention, all assassins," he began to type. "We are willing to offer a $20.000 reward for the head of Peter Katz, esq. First come, first serve! Undercover cops abstain."
He knew it was perhaps a stupid idea born out of desperation, but he had no other choice. He could already hear the fast food scouting party moving around two floors above him, which meant he was moments away from being discovered.
Out of sheer coincidence, he found the keys Peter had left him to feed his cat while he escaped. It was a safe place, thought James Truman-Conelly. If anything, it was better than to wait around to be found.
Putting the keys inside the crocodile's mouth, he decided to sneak out and wait out Peter's death in his own apartment.
How James Truman-Conelly managed to sneak past a small army without being detected is a subject for an entirely different chapter.
Pascal wasn't entirely pessimistic on his approach to life. While he did stated that humans are naturally wretched and prone to be unhappy forever, he does offer a nugget of hope for those who seek happiness: God. If a human were to acknowledge its own wretchedness and embraced God, they could find solace in the sea of sin that is human kind.
This was a very bold approach at the time, since most people thought God was busy talking on the other line of the celestial phone to hear them, and that the Catholic Church was also quite busy trying to convince people that a guy who nailed a few pages on the doors of a church in Germany wasn't the cool dude everyone thought he was. It was a weird time.
He did acknowledge that this was a very hard endeavor, mostly because humans were incredibly vain people who thought that they were the center of the world. In fact, Pascal had so little faith in humanity that he really believed that people, even when doing objectively good things, only do so to service their own need, like a politician who won't shut up about that intergalactic highway he just built.
Perhaps there is no better example of this line of thought that Peter Katz himself, who after doing what he thought was right, managed to courageously sacrifice Sneakolas Cage for the good of both him and Annoying. All he asked in return was a bit of undying gratitude from the girl.
Of course, Peter himself was missing the big picture—mainly that he was the cause of her misfortunes in the first place. It would come to no surprise—except for Peter—that all he got in return was an unending barrage of insults and screams from Annoying, who was still trapped inside the stolen police cruiser.
The yelling got particularly worse after Peter somehow missed an exit, and instead of going to Chicago, he managed to go the complete opposite way, until he somehow arrived to the Trail of Tears state forest.
It was named as such because the land used to be owned by Native Americans. We say "used to" because the U.S Army forced the natives off the land in the middle of the winter, claiming hundreds of lives in the process, thus making a metaphorical trail of tears. You can now have a nice, romantic picnic on the spot where countless people lost their lives. Neat!
Still, that little piece of trivia was lost on Peter. Everything was lost on Peter, to be more precise, since he had no idea where he actually was.
As he parked his car on the outskirts of the forest, he tried to figure out a map that was conveniently tucked away on the glove compartment. Tried being the operative word here since Annoying was still screaming at him.
"Can you fucking not?!" yelled Peter back. "I'm trying to figure out where to go next."
"You bastard!" yelled Annoying. "Let me out! I have to go back!"
"If I let you go back, you will be killed," said Peter. "I'm saving your life. You gotta show some appreciation. Besides, I need you to get to the Chicago hideout."
"You ruined my life!" she said, smashing her hands against the divider. "You threw my best friend at a crazy cyclops!"
"It was either him or us," said Peter, trying to ignore her and focusing on the map, which he had not figured out was upside down, and from a different state altogether.
"I used to think you were nice," she said with venom in her voice. "But now I see you're the kind of person who would spit on the one who kept you alive."
"I'm a New Yorker. That's our favorite pastime," said Peter. "Besides, I've been good to you. So what if a snake bit the dust? We're in a forest. You can go out a pick up a new best friend."
"Will you let me out?" asked Annoying.
"Will you promise not to run away?" asked Peter.
She answered by spitting on him.
"Nice form," said Peter, wiping the spit off his face, "but poor execution. Now who's spitting at whom?"
Annoying pushed her face against the divider, giving Peter a naughty smile. And we don't mean a sexy, naughty smile, but the kind of naughty look a particularly rowdy kid would give his father after taking a dump in the public pool. "You know how I kept you alive during your comma?"
"Don't care," said Peter.
"I gave Sneakolas some food to put in his mouth," she said, almost in a whisper. "Then I made him crawl down your throat to put that food directly into your stomach."
Peter dropped the map from sheer shock. "You mean...I deep-throated a snake?"
He was met with a surprisingly wicked laugh from Annoying. "And also, that's an Indiana map, you idiot daddy."
Peter jumped from the car, dry heaving and with a sudden urge to go back to the previous chapter and get the Horrible Ending over and over, just to spite her. "You need a time out, young lady."
"You're not my dad!" said Annoying.
"Ain't that convenient, now?" said Peter.
In the horizon, Peter could see a tower of white smoke over the trees, indicating some sort of bonfire or the like.
"I'll go get some directions," said Peter. "You stay here and try to calm down. I'll leave the A.C on."
Annoying smashed her head against the divider over and over again. "I swear I'm gonna to bite your neck!"
"Don't threaten me with a good time," said Peter, leaving the girl yelling inside the stolen cruiser. Not suspicious at all.
Nature has a way to clear someone's head, or in Peter's case, to make his head more preoccupied on not tripping on some forest-related shenanigan than to think about how ungrateful Annoying was being. He had saved her life. She should be throwing him a small party.
He tried doing one selfless thing in his life, and it had backfired on him—hard. That whole being good thing might be a little more hyped up than it really was, he thought. He didn't know how Sarah managed to do it all the time, if she only received ungratefulness from everyone.
It wasn't even the first time he did a nice thing that was met with ungratefulness. He once donated a kidney to an old man. Granted, it was not his kidney, and it wasn't donated per se, more like he threw it at the old man's head during a Yankee's game. The old man might've actually been Red Sox's pitcher Chandler Shepherd. But still, he was met with ungratefulness.
It didn't dawn on him that he hadn't been the most grateful person when it came to Sarah, but he did resolve to buy her a chocolate next time they met as a thank you for all her troubles. Hell, maybe even two! Who knows!
There is a reason why Peter often paid more attention to the path he walks on than to the inner machinations of his brain. Readers might remember that Peter is a klutz and a spaz. It comes to no surprise that the second he stopped paying attention to the path bellow him to think about how awesome and generous he was, he immediately fell into a lake.
Swimming in lakes is often a fun experience we encourage every carbon-based life form to experience it at least once. However, we at "Running with Scissors" do recommend that you do it with the proper attire for it, like a swimsuit. You can even do it naked. Don't worry, we won't tell. We do, however, recommend you not to swim using a Gucci suit. Not only because it would ruin a perfectly fine suit, but because Gucci suits tend to absorb a lot of water, making them very heavy.
And heavy things tend to sink.
Fast.