| Some people claim to know what happiness is. No one | | | | a lot of things, but permanent happiness is not one of |
| seems to know where or how to find happiness. But | | | | them. |
| can happiness really be found and kept? | | | | What does it really mean to live in America? Find it in |
| Born and raised in Liberia, we spend part of our | | | | those words in nation's Declaration of Independence: it |
| childhood dreaming about leaving Liberia, crossing the | | | | is the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". |
| vast Atlantic Ocean, landing on the heaven-on-earth | | | | In the United States, what you are given is the right to |
| terrain known as America. My junior high friend, Robert | | | | live, to be free, and to pursue happiness. You are not |
| Saydee and I would lay on the bunk beds of our dorm | | | | granted, guaranteed or given happiness. No, it's not |
| room in a boarding school and verbally dream of the | | | | happiness but the pursuit of it. That's what America |
| day when both of us would migrate to the great, rich | | | | offers. |
| United States, the land of the missionary, peace corps, | | | | The "pursuit" is the key to life in America. As for the |
| CIA agent, tourist, Hollywood star, cars, planes, and | | | | happiness part, give it up, you will never catch it here. |
| black American athletes. So we dreamed until Saydee | | | | Unless you have figured out the mental trick of finding |
| and I were separated by the need to continue our | | | | happiness in the pursuit itself, you will be a wind chaser |
| educational journeys in different locations. Our | | | | all the days of your life in America. Can you catch the |
| American dream lingered. | | | | wind and hold it in your hand? Neither can you grab |
| Well, it was not exactly the journey to America we | | | | happiness, hold it, and take it with you into your |
| would have scripted, but my lifelong friend and I are in | | | | American home. |
| the United States now. It was the brutal Liberian civil | | | | Happiness has little to do with geography. It is not |
| war that uprooted us and catapulted us to this sweet | | | | about location, or relocation. Moving from here to there |
| land of liberty, which has proved to be so much more | | | | will not make you happy any more than changing from |
| than our boyish minds had imagined. Give or take a | | | | flip flops or slippers to shoes. Happiness is not some |
| few surprises. | | | | place or some thing. |
| Liberians who still live in what is perhaps now the | | | | Happiness is a pursuit, not a catch. So, let the pursuit |
| world's poorest country will not believe me when I say | | | | begin, or let it continue. Remember, they call it "the |
| it, but it is true: there is no happiness in America, just as | | | | American dream". It's a "dream", not a reality. |
| there is no happiness in Liberia. Life in America means | | | | |