"The Pursuit of Happiness!" Is it pinned down in every household or still being pursued?
Had it not been for a "technical" reason, history tells us Independence Day in the United States would have been celebrated today, on July the 2nd instead of the 4th. Since resettlement from my first country of asylum, Uganda, over three years ago, I try to collate my perception of America before I came here with what I experienced after I landed here and began to be sucked in more and more into the system. Although, I had never had unrealistic rosy picture of life in America like some poor folks from my own neck of the woods, I never expected my perception of life in America oscillates this frequently and ultimately tilts to the negative conclusion it now drew.
Of course, this is not to claim that I had been happier in my own motherland Ethiopia or Uganda to which I fled in 2007 before I came here in 2014. How can I be happy in two notorious banana republics bordering on officially being declared as "failed states"? But there, in mother Africa, I am supposed to be unhappy and for that I get sympathy and support even at a time during which the source of unhappiness is caused by my own fault or failure.
Here in the United States where certain "truths" are declared to be "self-evident" 214 years ago among which "the pursuit of happiness" is enumerated as one of the "unalienable rights endowed by the creator," you have to sacrifice your life to make a "living." You have to strive barely to survive. For every trifle transaction, you have to sift through tons of legal jargon; you find out doing business on a handshake basis is only on movies, and so on and so forth which I can expound if I don't have to go to my sweatshop on a Sunday to "augment" my living.
Still, I never stopped being critical of myself and doubt that I might have missed something in this "land of opportunity" to rightly "pursue happiness" and pin it down. Yet, I observed my neighborhood, and surrounding far and near. If not outright misery, none seemed to have known even where to begin to pursue happiness. Could that be the reason Bob Dylan sang
"How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?"
At any rate, even the world testified that America's aspiration to the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is just aspiration yet to be attained in a 2017 report wherein world's happiest nation and people are revealed. United States ranked 14th, even beaten by Costa Rica. See Report http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/HR17.pdf
Be that as it may, it's too late for me to whine now on my misery except to continue to pursue happiness and pin it down in the United States. After all, as the song "It's too late to apologize" sung for Declaration of Independence" said I am "half away across the globe, standing on new ground."
Enjoy the music, and happy independence day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_56cZGRMx4
Had it not been for a "technical" reason, history tells us Independence Day in the United States would have been celebrated today, on July the 2nd instead of the 4th. Since resettlement from my first country of asylum, Uganda, over three years ago, I try to collate my perception of America before I came here with what I experienced after I landed here and began to be sucked in more and more into the system. Although, I had never had unrealistic rosy picture of life in America like some poor folks from my own neck of the woods, I never expected my perception of life in America oscillates this frequently and ultimately tilts to the negative conclusion it now drew.
Of course, this is not to claim that I had been happier in my own motherland Ethiopia or Uganda to which I fled in 2007 before I came here in 2014. How can I be happy in two notorious banana republics bordering on officially being declared as "failed states"? But there, in mother Africa, I am supposed to be unhappy and for that I get sympathy and support even at a time during which the source of unhappiness is caused by my own fault or failure.
Here in the United States where certain "truths" are declared to be "self-evident" 214 years ago among which "the pursuit of happiness" is enumerated as one of the "unalienable rights endowed by the creator," you have to sacrifice your life to make a "living." You have to strive barely to survive. For every trifle transaction, you have to sift through tons of legal jargon; you find out doing business on a handshake basis is only on movies, and so on and so forth which I can expound if I don't have to go to my sweatshop on a Sunday to "augment" my living.
Still, I never stopped being critical of myself and doubt that I might have missed something in this "land of opportunity" to rightly "pursue happiness" and pin it down. Yet, I observed my neighborhood, and surrounding far and near. If not outright misery, none seemed to have known even where to begin to pursue happiness. Could that be the reason Bob Dylan sang
"How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?"
At any rate, even the world testified that America's aspiration to the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is just aspiration yet to be attained in a 2017 report wherein world's happiest nation and people are revealed. United States ranked 14th, even beaten by Costa Rica. See Report http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/HR17.pdf
Be that as it may, it's too late for me to whine now on my misery except to continue to pursue happiness and pin it down in the United States. After all, as the song "It's too late to apologize" sung for Declaration of Independence" said I am "half away across the globe, standing on new ground."
Enjoy the music, and happy independence day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_56cZGRMx4
