The Italian Waiter
As we always do on a Saturday morning, my Lover and I made tea, rolled a joint and started talking about life. As my lover went on and on about his time in Grad School, I was thinking to myself, “ I have heard this story before but why am I not bored? Why am I so interested in the story that I am paying utmost attention? Why does it sound like a new story?” As these and many other thoughts raced in my mind, I came to a realization I had had a myriad of times in my life but seem to forget time and time again: I was happy. I thought to myself, “Suppose my lover was reenacting the same performance but the audience was replaced with someone else. Is it possible that my lover be the same person, but his new lover not at all happy or as entertained?” As I pondered I came to a new realization: Happiness does not come from the outside, it comes from within. What might induce happiness in one can induce misery in the other. So, wouldn’t it be more energy-efficient if instead of focusing on trying to get happiness from external sources, an endevour proven many times to be futile, one focus on at least finding the happiness that they lost. You know, the one you had when you couldn’t wait to go and show your father the drawing you made in art class, but was taken away when he didn’t even look at it. Each time someone disappointed us, they killed our happiness bit by bit. By the time we reached adulthood, we couldn’t even remember how happiness felt like even if we were bitch-slapped with it.
“That’s the real trouble with the world. Too many people grow up” — Walt Disney
Happiness is a reward our respective brains give us whenever we learn something new that helps us understand our place in the universe; It’s like a dog treat. As we grow older, because of psychological heuristics, something noone is immune to, we crystallize our identities and become impermeable to new ideas. Curiosity is what drives learning. We lose our curiosity because we somehow manage to convince ourselves that we now know everything there is to know about ourselves, and to avoid having our identities shaken, we fratenize with the crowd that reinforce the ideas we have already adopted. Perhaps we convince ourselves of such absurdity because admittance to ignorance might lead one to spiral into anxiety and depression; in a way, it’s how our brains protect us from ourselves, a survival instinct. The instincts that were meant to protect us, do so, but at a steep price. The irony is that the very thing that is supposed to make us happy is the very thing we fight day in, day out, and because we lack the very tools that help us find happiness, we find solace in relentlessly complaining and blaming the world for our miseries. When we shift blame to others, we lose the drive to do something about our miseries, sinking deeper and deeper into more misery. But those who push themselves out of the boxes people tend to end up in, who, time and time again question their identities, allowing their brains to continuously learn something new, live happily ever after. Happiness is a by-product of curiosity. As we grow older, along with our curiosities, our happiness dwindles into non-existence.
So, the reason why I believe I am generally happy is that I am a very good storyteller. When I meet a person for the first time, I tell myself a little story about why I am meeting them. I like to believe to myself that everyone I meet was sent by the Gods to teach me something new. I keep a keen eye on the good things I can learn from those people because I believe the Gods wouldn’t let my path cross with someone’s with whom I will learn absolutely nothing from. I might have ninety-nine problems with that person, but whether or not I am going to learn something from them is not one of them. So, as I tell myself stories, connecting everyone I know I’m my brain, I find it easy to remember in great detail what a coworker told me about their birthday party months ago. I like the look on people’s faces when I reference such details months later. It’s the twinkling in their eyes that makes me feel very good. That positive energy they radiate as their faces lighten up is what fuels my hapiness. That day I managed to brighten up a coworker’s face by referencing her birthday party in crisp detail, after she had had a bad meeting with our bully of a boss, I knew I had won at life.
So, my advice to you is this: You, yes You!, are responsible for your own happiness. No-one can ever make you happy. Whatever emotion you feel when someone makes you smile and for a split moment you feel a little brighter, it is not happiness. It simply is just a distraction from the agonies of day-to-day life. Happiness is a way of life. Happiness comes from self-worth, self-actualization, and come to think of it, self-worship. You would be worshiping yourself because you would be feeling like a God!
“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.” — Nietzsche
Say you are an Italian waiter working for a minimum wage at a Jewish restaurant in New York. Your friends have heard you complain about the rude diners you encounter on a daily basis that they feel like they should receive a paycheck from your boss for the moral upkeep of her employee. You can think to yourself that you are worth less, and let me tell you this: not only does it make you feel worse, it makes you hate your job, making it harder for you to keep fake-smiling when a diner asks you why the water you gave them has an aftertaste. Or, like me, you could entertain yourself with stories that make you feel like you worth more.
Once, there was a powerful empire called the Roman Empire, which was infamous for causing havoc on all land their horses could take them. These Romans redefined savagery. They built stadia for hundreds upon hundreds of people to come and watch some prisoners murder each other in cold blood. You can only imagine coming home from school to an empty house because your parents had non-refundable tickets to watch Getting Away with Real Murder at the local arena. How traumatic that childhood would have been? This Roman Empire, upon receiving rebellion from their Jewish subjects, enforced a siege on the city of Jerusalem. For several years, residents of that city couldn’t trade. Legend has it that there were reported cases of parents going to desperate lenghts as to considering their children as a possible source of vital nutrients. As you might have already been wondering, no, the meagre nourishment they got from ingesting whatever blubber was left in their children did not last very long. How traumatic that childhood would have been for those children? Some managed to garner enough strength and courage to escape to the mountains, and later, the rest of the world reaching as far as the United States.
‘Yes, I am a waiter, but I am only a waiter if I believe that’s all I am. I am so much more. My ancestors migrated, crossing mountain ranges and oceans, and every event that happened had to happen for me to be here. I would be letting down all the people that travelled through hell for me if all I will ever be is being just some other waiter. If I’m to be a waiter for the rest of my life, I’m going to challenge myself to be the waiter I never could imagine I was capable of being.’ — The Italian waiter
Two millenia later, the descendent of the Romans and the descendent of the Jews, together they work and serve food to hundreds of patrons, who, themselves, have interconnected stories of their own, in the great city of New York, in 2019.
Yes, Life might have seemed extremely unkind but it seems so because we do not have the right lense to help us focus on how it has also been extremely kind. Life is all perspective. You can either see yourself as a victim, or a victor.
Yes, Yes I know, this story is far-fetched. But it just entertained me while this big-nosed guy was taking five minutes to order the dish he always does when he visits this restaurant.
