43.

Happiness comes from not thinking. The easiest way to not think is to be surrounded by friends and family. I think that is a significant portion of the benefit of loved ones: to distract from introspection. There is no happiness within. If you look, you’ll just find bits of useless epiphanies you can’t transfer to your everyday interactions. Like bottled fireflies. This is hard for people who think they are the shit, all their inner thoughts and fascinating revelations. The people they interact with have to be extra special and engaging in order for them to lose themselves in outward attention. In ordinary company, they will find themselves to be the most interesting person in the room, and turn inward. This becomes a pattern, and they will eventually stop meeting people, and remove all chances of meeting those extra interesting people who can save them from themselves. There is hope though. They will just need one burst of a person to punch through their ennui and jolt them out of their minds. This sudden shining experience may give them faith that external objective happiness still exists for them. All their accumulated self-confirmations about the dullness of people can’t stand up against that one blazing example. They will become more receptive to possibilities and give people more chances, which can only be a good thing.