Happy People Are Annoying

by Josh Peck

It takes a lot of strength to stay in the emotional orbit of an addict. You have to sit there and accept being radiated while the addict becomes nuclear. The great lie most of us tell ourselves is that we’re the only one being hurt by our actions and choices, but in my experience that couldn’t be further from the truth. You hurt everyone who has the guts to go on loving you, and eventually their only option is to walk away, no matter how much they want to help.

And here you were thinking that drugs were exciting and sexy when in fact they were like an aboveground pool, great in theory, terrible in practice.

better?” As if somehow a vaccine was administered. I heard a guy at a meeting once say, “If this was only about drinking too much, they’d round up every alcoholic from skid row to the Pacific Palisades, throw ’em in the lockup for thirty days, let ’em dry out, and then they’d never drink again.” Problem solved, right? Except it ain’t about drinking, that’s what you’ll come to find out. Drinking was but a symptom of a greater problem that centered in my mind. And that problem required constant maintenance, constant vigilance, constant spiritual principles. Because my mind wants me dead and the only way to combat that is to have a daily practice.

You wouldn’t second-guess Kobe Bryant when you heard that after a game, win or lose, he would put up five hundred free throws. When I interviewed Tim Grover, coach to Michael Jordan among others, he said, “After every single game, I would ask Michael one thing, ‘Six, seven, or eight?’ which meant ‘What time are we hitting the gym tomorrow?’”

It’s assumed that to achieve excellence, you need that level of commitment, grit, work ethic to achieve a flow state when you’re on the big stage. Nothing good...

“Let me ask you this, what are you willing to let go that stands between you and happiness? The obvious stuff is easy, that anger you’ve been holding on to, that resentment. But what about the things you think are assets? That relationship you think you can’t live without, that job you think defines you, can you let go of that? Because, if you’re really serious about getting happy, you might be forced to let it all go, to know you can be okay without it. Because you’re the fish you’re trying to catch, you are the love of your life, you’re everything you’ve been searching for.”

Here’s what I think of it now: it’s overrated. The thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi said, “We seek neither to despair, nor rejoice.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, but I’ll try. What I think Rumi meant is, life is ineffable. It’s too weird and complex to reduce down to a single word such as happy. Life is relentless, it’s very much in session, and it’s throwing everything it’s got at us at all times. So congratulations, you get to feel the full spectrum of human emotions life has to offer, and if you’ve done the work, if you’ve participated in life and not run from it, then you’re equipped to do it.