The Absence of Sadness

How do I capture happiness?

When you think of happiness, you think of a bunch of cheesy moments in rom-coms. Two people in love walking down the beach at sunset, a father embracing her daughter after she survived an illness, a group of friends splashing into a pool in slow motion, laughing. Those are too sappy though. Real life doesn't drip honey like that, does it?

Describe what happiness means to you in one page...ugh. My English teacher has this annoying habit of giving out homework. Well, giving out homework that makes no sense. One time he asked us to recite Shakespeare lines to people on the street. I'm pretty sure shouting "THE LADY DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH, METHINKS" to strangers at the local mall would constitute harassment. Almost every single student, with the exception of this really extroverted drama nerd, just quietly read some Hamlet lines to their family over dinner. This other time he divided us into teams and asked us to argue what color was best. Except we had to speak with our lips completely covering our teeth, tho we were thpeakin like thith, and had to incorporate a bunch of silly words into our sentences. He's an odd one but definitely makes class interesting. He often, unwittingly, appears on students' Snapchat stories, prancing around the classroom, shouting Oscar Wilde quotes.

This new assignment beats the record though. Describe what happiness means to you in one page. What kind of assignment is this? How would I, a 16-year-old boy who's never had a girlfriend, know what happiness is. Happiness is not something I often think about. I know I don't like when I feel sad, and I go about my day trying not to be sad, but is this the same thing as happiness though? The absence of sadness. If you think about these two emotions as weights on a scale (sorry, I'm a math nerd, hang in there with me) with happiness on one side and sadness in the other, taking away sadness makes the scale tip in favor of happiness, happiness wins. So happiness simple is the absence of sadness.

The saddest day of my life was when my pup passed away. Miko, the sweetest and fluffiest golden retriever, my best friend for 15 years. My parents adopted him when I was a baby and he was just a pup, he was always happy. He would come racing down the stairs whenever he heard me open the front door, wag his tail and lick everyone that visited, he would even sneakily jump into the pool whenever there was a chance and make a mess everywhere. During thunderstorms, he would crawl next to my bed and whimper until I let him jump next to me, us two under our blankets against the storm. Miko got sick last year and his sprints were replaced with a slow wobble as he trembled his way down the stairs, until one day, we noticed he couldn't stand up. He would look up at us with pain in his eyes, begging for help as his muscles tensed and gave away. We knew it was the right thing to do, but it still felt horrible. He got to eat his favorite treats on the way to the vet, and I held him tight and stroked his head as they injected him. He was at peace but I was a wreck. I have never cried so much in my life. My mom had to hug me that night, there was a Miko-sized hole on my bed and in my heart. Crying yourself to sleep isn't fun, but crying at school is worse. The boys at my school make fun of you if you cry during class. But even they know it's okay to cry for your dog though.

Eventually, the sadness of losing Miko passed. But the absence of that sadness didn't make me happy. It just made me... be. The happiness/sadness scale wouldn't work. Happiness didn't happen in the absence of sadness. Agh. I can't think or write anymore. That night I dreamt of Miko and I playing fetch in the forest behind my house. He would always come back with the wrong branch but very satisfied with himself nonetheless. I loved that dog.

School was a blur the next day. Thoughts on the nature of happiness kept popping in and out of my head. Even in math class, my favorite! Is this what my mom meant when she joked my dad was going through a midlife crisis? I kept seeing happiness on other people: couples smiling in the hallway, friends happily gossiping about whoever their crush was, even the janitors were talking and laughing. Was happiness as simple as smiling? I tried to smile while walking down the hallway between periods, but felt silly and quickly stopped.

School ended and I headed straight to the shelter. After Miko passed away, my parents refused to adopt another puppy. Too much work they said, even though I would've taken care of everything. I was puppy-less and sad, until I saw an ad on the internet to volunteer at the local dog shelter. I immediately signed up. I expected the work to include some poop, but it included more poop than I could've ever imagined. Still, I loved every second of it. I got to play with puppies and doggos and puppers and woofers all day long. I got to teach them tricks and care for them. There were sad moments too, I had to see a lot of friends pass away. But the joy of watching them happily wag their tails as they joined their new families was worth it. Dogs were so good at being happy. Maybe we just need to be more like dogs...run around carefree and lick everything.

Taking care of a litter of corgi puppies I started thinking about Miko. Not the sadness of losing him, but all the happy memories that we shared. Watching him grow alongside me. Teaching him tricks, exploring the forest with him, telling him my secrets. I felt excited to watch these baby corgis grow into playful dogs, full of life. Just like Miko. I held Bell in my arms, a cute golden corgi, as she playfully tried licking my fingers and looking at me mischievously. I can't wait to watch them grow.

I think sadness if a combination of having happy memories and being excited about the future. Losing Miko was the saddest moment of my life, but I have 15 years worth of happy memories with him. Thanks to him, I know what I want to do with my life. Working with animals and rescue puppies makes me happy and I want to do it every single day I can. And I know that I'll be happy doing it. So I did just that: stopped overthinking about happiness and went to play with the puppies.