{"code":"happiness","title":"The Pursuit of Happiness","collection_type":"theme","subroute":"happiness","header_1":"The Pursuit of Happiness","header_2":"Catching a wisp of smoke with a net.","description":"A collection of short stories on the pursuit of happiness. Read or download. The Nightingale by Hans Christian Anderson, A House in the Country by Richard Connell.","has_text":true,"quote":{"quote":"“Oh, how beautiful is the nightingale’s song!” * The Nightingale","code":"the-nightingale"},"image":true,"image_alt":"A pencil sketch of a nightingale singing, with wispy lines emanating from its mouth","image_filter":"grayscale(1) sepia(1) contrast(2.5)","image_title":"The Nightingale - Sketch","image_code":"the-nightingale","stories":[{"story":"come-by-chance","description":"Like a butterfly, it runs away and hides when we chase after it, but settles on our shoulder when we are looking the other way. It lives in a place off the map and with no coordinates and no directions, and we only find ourselves there for brief spurts of time by accident. \nBanjo Paterson introduces us to the paradox of happiness through a quaint poem written in the rhyming pattern popularised by Poe’s famous poem *The Raven*. In the poem a man finds a mysterious town known only as *Come-by-Chance* and wonders how he could find this place where he would finally be free of life’s hustles and worries. But of course, it’s not a place one can get to by walking."},{"story":"a-house-in-the-country","description":"So, what do we busy ourselves with while we sit around and wait for happiness to ‘come by’, why bother doing anything at all? Career and family ambitions; holidays, clothes, and cars; a beautiful house in the country; do they serve a purpose in the end of all things or are they nothing but a distraction?\nRichard Connell investigates these *distractions* that are our life goals and what purposes they serve to our sanity and wellbeing. In *A House in the Country*, the eccentric Hosmer Appleby spends his every waking hour seemingly planning for his future retirement in a country house. His friend can’t seem to understand why Appleby feels the need to plan so far ahead, and never runs out of energy despite his inability to live in the moment."},{"story":"the-nightingale","description":"And yet, despite all this talk about the difficulty of finding happiness, are there not things that bring us happiness at the snap of our fingers? Need it be so hard, need we wait, when there are pleasures all around us for low, low prices?\n*The Nightingale*, written in 1843, is so timeless it could be mistaken for an on-the-nose criticism of mobile phones, social media and other modern addictions. An emperor, who enjoys listening to a nightingale from the woods, is gifted a wind-up nightingale that can sing thirty times in a row without a break. With no need of the real bird, it flies away, and the emperor doesn’t even notice until one day the clockwork replacement breaks from overuse."},{"story":"the-dream-of-a-ridiculous-man","description":"But sometimes happiness never seems to show its face no matter how long we wait. Sometimes the sun stays below the horizon for so long we begin to doubt it’s even there at all. And what’s worse is in these times suffering never disappears as easily. \nDostoevsky, in an almost magic trick of genius, justifies living with suffering alone. In *The Dream of a Ridiculous Man*, a man plans on committing suicide, but after a street girl begs for someone to help her sick mother, he finds himself unable to go through with it. During a fantastical dream, he discovers a new sense of purpose in his life and the courage to wrestle with suffering itself."}]}