Happy People Are Annoying

by Josh Peck

“The reason why people are funny is usually not funny at all.” I don’t know where that quote’s from but it fits. I had acquired a set of skills to help me navigate the world around me. I became a natural choice for school plays, after-school theater programs, whatever—because my life was one big performance anyway, a highly crafted show to keep people’s eyes where I wanted them to go. I also really liked performing. Of course, eventually, I’d have to face this aversion to actually being myself instead of this character I had created, but that would come so much later.

Funny thing about taking your life into your own hands, though, is once you have it, there’s no one to blame. It’s now solely your responsibility to make something happen and if it all falls apart, well, that’s on you. And that’s exactly what happened, when I set my life on fire.

Drugs lifted the pain of existence so well that I mistook being high for being alive.

“Find the people who support you to be what you want to be, who push you to be your very best, and if you find yourself in a room with someone who doesn’t make you feel that way, leave immediately.”

Anger is about the quiet, seething judgment of everyone and everything. You become the self-appointed arbiter of all that is right and wrong in the world and if people would only act the way you thought they should, life would be infinitely better.

When you’re angry, everything is personal and nothing is random. You take on the injustice of the world, and if there’s no injustice, you create it. It felt good to be on the offensive, powerful.

“Pain is knowledge rushing into your brain with great speed.” My mom, my first Apostle.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

“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.”

The hard times are here to teach us, and the good times are to remind us what we’re fighting for.