Polotan on happiness

“I THINK a man begins to lose himself when he forgets he once walked around with holes in his socks. It’s that kind of remembering that keeps us all earthbound, vulnerably human, and vulnerably happy. Frayed socks, empty rice bins, leftovers on the table, second-class movie houses, coffee in cheap restaurants, and so on. Want, or the memory of it, not satiation, keeps our nerve ends sensitive. And happiness? Life’s innumerable complexities boil down to some cliche, bromidic, ho-hum, but true: money isn’t everything, a friend’s a friend, and God is love. You are what makes you happy - power, pelf, credit cards, custom-made shoes, a doorman’s salute, a hot line to the Palace, but how many of us want nothing more than to lock the doors and close the windows on a cold and rainy night with all the children safely in bed, turn on the radio to listen to an old song and implore the saints to keep love and life safe for a long long time. Everyone’s trying to write off some ugly memory in his past—breakfastless mornings, jobless days, an untitled past, but if you succeed too well and wipe off everything, you might lose more than you wanted to. The human neck has muscles that one can use to look back; if you look back enough, perhaps it keeps the heart from getting too fibrous." - Kerima Polotan, from an essay entitled Call Me Mister