MADIAM, LANIE LEI M. EDU30 BIO2Y2-1 26 FEBRUARY 2013
Defining Happyness
“Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Not even me.” Something along those lines did Chris Gardner, a sworn father, with knitted brows and all tell to his son how dreams can never be taken away. It is such an encompassing circumstance where trust between a parent and a child is oddly established.
Oddly enough, that is. I haven’t encountered so far anyone who would swear proper parenthood and would see their own child grow up thru the years while burning in their child’s mind that the child will have to build his own dream, pursue, and justify it regardless of future predicaments by which even his parents should deny him of his wills and dreams. Asking a child of his dreams in life is one thing. Deciding if his supposed dreams are for him is another. Having him understand your dreams is a bit on the side-track. Telling him to trust you in climbing up your way to your own dreams is a whole lot far on the other side. Why? A parent’s dream most of the time if not always consist of fulfilling his own desires and yet establishing a foreground for his child’s would-be-dreams. Doing both is not that easy. Spice in some trust and it will be the least easy. And that part of a life story is called pursuing happiness.
Pursuing happiness is such a tread where trust is hardly bought and hardly given away. Let’s leave the matter of defining trust. Not that I do know what the word defines to a large extent (or the utter lack thereof). But trust is a matter of creating bonds – of respect, of acceptance, of acknowledgement, of breaching the gaps. Relationship-wise: it is essential. And the most profound and yet most basic form of all relations is the family.
Gardner had tried to run a complete family promising that everything will be all right from the start of his marriage with Linda. He managed to start running his family investing his entire life savings on a portable bone density scanner. He swore that he let his son grow knowing him as he has only met his father when he was around 28 years of age. That – was only the beginning.
Cutting down the chase of his life’s turning point, he was broke as soon as his scanner sales were barely mobilizing, left behind by his wife, kicked out by his tenant, imprisoned for accumulating parking tickets, lived a day in a ‘cave’ (a public restroom), jostling in line at 5 o’clock in the afternoon for a free lodge, all the while struggling as an intern in Dean Wither’s Brokerage Firm carrying his baggage around the clock and selling his scanners.
It’s quite satirical how one particular hobo could somehow save him. The hobo, although absurd, finds his scanner to be a time machine, gets the chance to have it “accidentally” in his possession. During the time when the government accessed Gardner’s bank accounts for not paying taxes leaving him only with $21, here comes mister hobo in the park and saves his day managing to survive his last days before the end of his internship.
On another hand, pulling thru in the story is the innocence of Christopher, Gardner’s son. He is a normal child with normal needs gifted with a ten-gallon head. He keeps looking for his mom, keeps asking on where his dad is going, keeps on having this various reactions with regards to their shelter-hopping, and keeps his dad amused. Nevertheless, he trusts his dad. Gardner, in return, keeps his feet on the ground for the sake of his son.
What started it all?
Thomas Jefferson in his Declaration of Freedom mentioned happiness. Ironic that in legal papers, that civilian general word exists multiple times in the declaration. Gardner took note of that. From the part of his life which he called ‘riding a bus’, he came in contact with a throng of the working class all smiles. There he questioned, when can he be happy just like that? Possibly, and not probably, the reason why he taunts on ramifying the word happyness in his son’s daycare.
Is it human nature to seek happiness? To delineate trust? To form an ideal family?
One thing, though: Never waver.
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