I am intrigued and enticed, by words.  I will always remember the words “I claim them all.” They comes from Huxley’s Brave New World. John the Savage speaks them, claiming humanities right to unhappiness. I was fourteen when I read those words. I remember the ecstasy, I remember feeling triumphant. I remember undignifiedly jumping up and down. Should I really have been this happy over the right to misery, when I already have the right to the pursuit of happiness?

I’ve decided that the reasons those words made me so happy was because they expanded on three ideas that I knew in the back of my mind would be important for understanding the world. The first idea was that some people are only a certain way because they never had the opportunity to be otherwise. Some people are pleasant only because they’ve never been faced with anything unpleasant. Some people are brave only because they need to be. But most would agree, that having a choice to do something good is better than simply feeling good, the latter being the unsaid motto of the society in Brave New World.

The second thought that was triggered by reading Huxley’s classic was that truly good things are not easy. Doing good often comes from overcoming bad. Heroic acts are not everyday ones. Misery provides humanity with the potential to do good and to do better. This leads to the third concept, that one of the characteristics of humanity is unhappiness. But maybe, as a people, we’ve always had a knack for facing adversity. That seems to be evidenced by the fact that we are still here.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the declaration of independence that we have the right to the pursuit of happiness and I’ve come to recognize that happiness is not a state of being. It’s a moment that you run for, and that happens along the way. You can never truly feel it if you’ve never felt anything else. Huxley knew this and he imparted it to me in only four words.

It will probably take more to fix the world.
It can be done.
I want to do it.
With words.
I want to fix something.
Maybe the world for one minute. I know it will hold for only so long. And then I want to start again.
That is my passion.