Miracle Creek

by Angie Kim

It was why all the studies showed that rich, successful people who should be the happiest—CEOs, lottery winners, Olympic champions—weren’t, in fact, the happiest, and why the poor and disabled weren’t necessarily the most depressed: you got used to your life, whatever accomplishments and troubles it happened to hold, and adjusted your expectations accordingly.

The relativity of happiness is something I’ve thought about a lot. This idea of ‘should vs. is’ when it comes to so-called objective successes as compared to subjective feelings of happiness. I think I became fascinated with this notion as a child. In Korea, my parents and I were very poor. We lived in one tiny room of another family’s house, with no indoor plumbing and limited electricity. But I had my parents with me always, and I remember our life in Korea as one of happiness and contentment. When we moved to the US, my life got much better, objectively; my aunt’s house where I lived was luxurious, with multiple indoor bathrooms, my own bedroom with a bed, color TVs, refrigerators and microwaves. But I lost my parents in the process. They ran a grocery store in a dangerous part of Baltimore, and the store hours were so long (6 am to midnight) that they lived in the store, and I saw them once every few weeks. So even though I knew I should have been grateful to be in America, I couldn’t. I longed to return to that squalid shack where my parents and I were happy, even though we probably shouldn’t have been because we were so poor.