Happiness in a box?

# Chapter 212

Happiness in a box. Doesn’t exist. Marketed ruthlessly and you start to think it is actually possible, but it is not. There are some close facsimiles like coffee peanut butter and Nutella, but this too is a duplicate, a replica, a story. Like the story of the last 60 years in the USA that a car is happiness in a box. That is a story almost all of us have purchased at one time or another. The objective reality is that a car is an expensive polluting machine that gets you from point A to point B and it is not happiness in a box.

Another myth is that a house is happiness in a box. Myth or marketing ploy, I mean you do have to live somewhere and at the same time, few home owners think of their house as happiness in a box, not unless they have very deep pockets. Repairs are never-ending and upkeep is relentless and cleaning and taxes and insurance and grass always keep growing, so this is no happiness in a box unless you just enjoy all these things and once again have deep pockets. My father-in-law built his last house, every block, truss, wall and board, and it was definitely a pleasure point for him, and this I would say was a close as you ever get to happiness in a box, it was a complete package for a strong outdoorsy mechanical engineer in retirement. Dad had a ball building that place. He didn’t enjoy owning it and living in it nearly as much as he did building it. But those were three wonderful years of fun for him . . . .

And there is the closest you will get to happiness in a box, long projects that bring you joy and contentment = happiness. For my father-in-law it was building a house, for my dad it is rebuilding an antique car. For me and you?