Borrowed Happiness

From Fighting Spiders: She sneers at him and tells him that the love of his love, Annie, is going to be engaged. He shakes his head. She snorts. She says the man is a doctor, a wealthy, responsible, and upright man; not a lowlife gangster who knows nothing but violence.

But what of the doctor then? Who in his family had to fight for a living so that he could, perhaps many "hops" down, enjoy a tranquil life. Did his family know any soldiers or gangsters, warlords or thieves: people who often are only doing what they are doing to get by, to feed their poor children or to carve out some sort of a future for them?

And what of me. Are we living on borrowed happiness, unknowingly enjoying the fruit of others' suffering, and all-at-once suffering so that someone else might find heaven? No, love doesn't tide over a multitude of these things. Love doesn't change the fact that we suffer; it can at best be the reason we sometimes let ourselves.

Perhaps that's the ultimate purpose of man: the vicarious pleasure of the great-big-man-in-the-sky who takes great enjoyment in experiencing life through the eyes of subjects—whom he has total control over but never truly understands.