Group 1 Reader – Greggory Adams
What is happiness? I believe that happiness cannot be defined, because for each of us it takes a different form. It fills us through different mediums. Most would say that Ethan is not happy, that he is dead and hollow inside. This may be true but I would like to propose that he still could be happy. For a musician, happiness could come as the thrill of composing ones emotions into verse, preforming in front of a crowd, and interacting with adoring fans. For me, happiness is being with my family, relaxing after a productive day on a cool summer night. In more clear terms, happiness, in part, can be found by doing things you enjoy. I believe that Ethan enjoys his work. He could have quit his job long ago and done something else, but instead he is enthralled by his manuals and learning to make things work. He is unique in his priorities, he clearly has such a deep passion for his manuals and coding that time itself escapes him. In my experience, when I am doing something I truly love, the time spent engaged in that action is simply never enough. So why can Ethan not be happy with his life? Most of his time is monopolized in what I would classify as his passion. If that much of my time was spent on my passions I would be happy. From the mainstream perspective, Ethan is a miserable man, not experiencing the world around him, closed off, failing in his relationships, but what about his perspective? Perhaps fixing a bug makes him happy, perhaps comprehending manuals is what he enjoys. Although this idea may prove to be false, I think that at some point, Ethan could have been happy.