I know a guy who will not associate with anyone who can’t help him reach his big goal in life. I believe his goal is to win the biggest prize given to translators of novels. He wants to be seen as an authority in the land of intellectuals. He can’t write books, his style is sluggish, overwrought and although he’s read more than anyone I know, he can’t be creative. But he translates like a machine. He can translate the creativity of others. And that’s his goal, to be recognized as an intellectual, an intellectual star, to be lauded, to be a worthy successor to his mother, who was also a translator. (this is why I don’t have too much respect for his accomplishments, he was born into a family of translators, he got a serious headstart in life).

If you can’t help him on his career path, he ditches you, he forgets you. He knows how to be friendly to people he can use. Then he puts on his charm engine, he will flatter you, give you gifts, anything to put you in front of his career cart so you can pull it.

That’s him. There’s almost nothing else to this man. A career man through and through, with a tiny bit of time reserved for family.

Is he happy?

Maybe yes, he has a clear goal. All he needs to do is translate every day.

His health is failing, I believe he is friendless, as people in his life are really just pawns, and he doesn’t have the best relationship with his offspring, he’s a snob and looks down on most people, and you only matter in his eyes if you have some title, some prestige, but maybe he’s happy. He gets into plenty of conflicts because he has a big ego and it’s easy for anyone in the little world he operates in to step on his toes. He combines three jobs, so I suppose all the stress doesn’t help to control his frustrations and short temper.

My biggest problem is that he doesn’t care about people. In fact, I think he’s the only psychopath I have ever personally dealt with. He never attacked me or anything, he never murdered anyone, but I think he could be a psychopath. His career is everything to him and he seems dead to almost everything else.

Maybe I even used to be like him. Or tried hard to be like this. It makes life a lot easier if you are a maniac with one clear goal you can work towards and block everything else out.

It used to be my strategy. But I found it very destructive. My relationships with others suffered greatly. I was a maniac. A restless freak. I saw people only in terms of how I could use them, and I was proud of it, because I reckoned that all people were like this, they were just not courageous enough to act upon this most fundamental human traits. I was proud and vain, and at times, after some event I interpreted as a personal victory I was happy for a bit. Until I needed the next ego fix.

Am not sure how it changed exactly.

Maybe it was the suicide of my father.

Maybe it was because my ego got so badly mauled I was forced to find a new happiness strategy.

Maybe it was meeting people who really aren’t like this and who are happier.

Maybe my mother helped me snap out of this monomaniac state.

Maybe therapy helped.

It’s likely a combination of all of the above.

What’s my strategy for happiness today?

  • Keep increasing your savings account (I have a trauma from being poor and I never want to be without money again)
  • Save to buy extra apartments
  • Don’t ever masturbate (it exhausts me and turns me into a zombie)
  • Make sure you can be proud of the work you do
  • Work to be top fit
  • If it doesn’t serve love, don’t speak it
  • Have fun
  • Find fun sexual partners, but great one at the time is already enough
  • Write every day
  • Often meet up with friends to play fairly complicated boardgames (the only thing apart from sex that makes me forget my worries)
  • Finish a good book
  • Become a full blown psychotherapist who does not need to teach so much
  • Love and protect your family
  • Surround yourself with as many beautiful, intelligent women as possible
  • Go running three times a week

Isn’t everything we do in life an attempt to be loved just a little bit more?