The Man Who Discovered Happiness

The entire world knows of him. The most popular name since Einstein. It is miraculous how he could do what he did. All discoveries and inventions are minor in comparison, since he was able to make just about the entire world happy.

It didn’t take long either since once he announced his discoveries and traveled the world speaking about what he discovered, everyone’s brain lit up. The darkness was forever lifted. People got it.

The unifying thing about humans is not a single one does not want to be happy. The singular shared goal of all human life is happiness. We seek it out in so many different ways. It is what every human being aspires towards so once he was able to figure out how people could actually be happy all the time, it caught like a fire in a dry forest.

 

His name was Joe Ollman. Obviously he has been dead for some time now, but his discovery has still to this day changed the lives of everyone on planet earth. Even though we all live indoors now and are continually on-line, we have all found a happiness that is far greater than any kind of happiness experienced by humans who were off-line and went outdoors. Psychotherapy, psychiatry, life-coaches, self-help gurus, spiritual gurus, all of these professions are a thing of the past. No longer needed. In school I read about how many, many, many years ago, these were the most popular professions. They were everywhere and bookstores were filled with self-help and psychology books written by these people. Not any more. None of them exits today, since everyone is happy.

Joe Ollman. This is a name which will never be forgotten as long as humans are around. You can ask anyone, even children who Joe Ollman was and they will tell you the man who discovered happiness. And his discovery was not even that difficult. It is strange that authentic happiness eluded humans for so long. Joe Ollman just made it very easy for everyone to understand and implement it.

 

For those of you who are interested, Ollman’s Theory of Happiness is: To be happy is the absence of negative thought. Pretty simple, right? That as long as a person has negative thoughts they will not be able to be happy. In order to be happy a person must be able to eradicate all negative thinking. Sounds simple but not so easy. The genius of Joe Ollman was that he made it easy.

When Joe Ollman was alive he lived in a society that created deep unhappiness. The society that Ollman lived in was so dysfunctional that the vast majority of citizens had to take pills to make them feel better and more functional in what he called “The Sick Society.” Can you believe that? Society was at one time so dysfunctional and unhealthy that people had to take a pill, which generated more serotonin in their brain chemistry so that they could function better in that society. Even though it was over sixty years ago since things have really changed it still surprises me that this is how things once were.

People were continually worried about having enough money and what other people thought of them. People distracted themselves with things that caused them to feel even more empty inside. The routine and monotony in people’s lives caused them to live with this empty feeling inside, which drove them into states of deep anger and depression. Wow. Everyone was stressed out since surviving in The Sick Society caused a person to have to do a lot of things that they did not want to do. People had to pretend to be happy about working at jobs that they did not feel happy at. Everyone was disconnected from one another. No real relationships were able to be sustained in this harsh climate of anger, addiction, worry and depression. People pursued happiness but could never find it because their heads were filled with negative thoughts and people spent most of their time lost inside their heads. Fear prevented almost everyone from living the life that they wanted to really live. People were committing suicide and violent crimes everywhere. Men interested in power and money ran the world and the masses were much too afraid to rise up against the state. The people were powerless. They had no choice but to submit. It was pure madness. The only thing that could help this situation were psychiatric pills. It was the real Dark Age.

 

Joe Ollamn is a global hero because he is single-handedly responsible for bringing people out of these dark ages. He basically rescued everyone from the darkness and brought almost everyone out into the light. All with his very simple Theory Of Happiness. Joe Ollman was also once a very depressed and negative man. He admitted to often thinking about suicide and then he realized that there could be an alternative way. He did not have to physically die as much as he needed to psychologically change. Ollman realized that he needed to eradicate negative thoughts.

Ollman started practicing Mindfulness meditation intensively so that he could develop the awareness needed to know when he was starting to have negative thoughts and feelings. “When the emptiness and darkness was starting to creep in,” he often said. Once he was able to have this awareness he could catch it and turn the thoughts and feelings into something positive before the negativity snowballed into a miserable state. The importance of awareness in being a happy person was not discovered by Ollman but it was really brought into the mainstream by him. Today most people practice mindfulness meditation and it is because humans are much more aware that they are able to subvert negativity the moment it arises.

Ollman’s Theory Of Happiness stresses that if a person wants to be happy they must be able to not dwell in their heads. That dwelling or ruminating in thought is unhappiness. In order to avoid this a person must engage in distractions that allow them to feel engaged, focused and better about themselves when finished with the distractions. People just needed to become better able at choosing more quality distractions for themselves rather than just taking what is being offered by the highest bidder. It is because of Ollman’s discovery that Hollywood, Netflix, HBO, social media, cable television, most forms of advertising, Amazon Prime are now things of the past. Corporations that created and profited off of human misery are now gone! People now actually live quality lives. Who would have ever thought? All because of one man.

 

Ollman once said in a YouTube interview, “If human beings want to be happy they must be able to remain present and aware. It is so crucial that people are present and engaged in their lives in a carefree kind of way. If a person wants to be happy they must be carefree because if they are not stress and worry and depression will quickly rise up. The Sick Society did not allow people to be carefree. Everyone was worried and stressed out all the time and this is why unhappiness was such an epidemic. If people really want happiness it is so important that they are able to live in  a carefree way. Moment by moment, day by day without worrying about the future or thinking about the past. When a person is truly happy they are fully in the moment. They are fully content and engaged in the moment without a care in the world. The moment a person is no longer carefree, unhappiness sets in. The thing about humans is that we do have the ability to be carefree. We just need to exercise this ability or potential more regularly through mindfulness meditation practice.”

This was once of the most viewed videos in YouTube history and it is where Ollamn’s Theory of Happiness was presented to the world. Einstein wrote books and papers but it is interesting how things change. Ollman wrote no books or papers but presented his discoveries through YouTube videos. No one reads books anymore. Everyone just watches YouTube videos and Ollman was visionary enough to know that this would be the case one day. Ollman was such a genius and I am so grateful for his presence on planet earth. I do not know what the hell anyone would do without his Theory Of Happiness. We would all be taking pills and living in that dark and very sick society that almost caused Ollman to take his own life.

I am so happy the dark ages are now behind us.

*This is an essay written by a young girl for her online eighth grade Sociology class.

The Man Who Fell On The Moon (A Rough Sketch For A Film)

*This is a rough sketch for a potential film. Please excuse any grammatical or editing errors. The sketch has been edited several times but think of this more as “thinking out loud” rather than a work with any literary merit.

1.

As he fell through empty space, surprisingly there was an absence of thoughts in his mind. His mind was a reflection of the empty space all around. Everything felt still, except for the fact that he was falling. He could not recall a time his mind had been this quiet ever before. Funny it should happen this way. As he observed the passing darkness all around, there was no fear. You would think that a person would be terrified in this situation, but he was not. There was no struggling to hold on. He allowed space to do with his body what it wanted as he quietly watched through the narrow window in his space helmet, things that no one ever gets to see.

As he fell through space, he was tumbling like a t-shirt in a dryer. Around and around and around in slow motion. Maybe it was the tumbling motion that lulled his mind into a thoughtless state. As he tumbled he could see the immense glow of the moon, the distant stars, black holes, celestial spheres, expansive darkness and a luminescent blue tennis ball sized object, which was earth. It was impossible to feel fear while observing enigmas such as these.

And then, as if it did not matter at all, he lost consciousness.

2.

He had come to outer space with the man in charge of the space expedition, Jack Gilbert. There was only two of them. The intention of the mission was to commandeer a defunct satellite that had been puttering through the solar system since 1978. It was called ISEE-3, and it was the first human-made object to ever pass through the tail of a comet. In 1981, its battery shut down leaving it stranded in space. It was able to putter around in space for all this time because its orbiter was able to maintain power from solar panels that were mounted on its backside. The satellite was making a rare passage close to the moon, which allowed NASA to send two astronauts into space in a final attempt to get the satellite’s thrusters working again. It was not viewed as a difficult mission. The astronauts would not be going far into space and the ISEE-3 satellite was not technically difficult to work on since it was developed during a time when toaster ovens were smarter than spaceships.

Jack and Jonathan (who were referred to as the Two J’s) would need no more than two or three days to get the thrusters working again. Simple and by the book. The Two J’s would be back on earth watering their gardens and sleeping in their beds by the end of the week. This is why it was such a surprise when those working in the NASA Ground Station suddenly heard Jack yell: “Oh fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Jonathan!”

Still no one is sure exactly what happened but a final theory has been settled on just to give people a false sense of resolution. Some still suspected that Jack had been somehow involved, since he and Jonathan had a tumultuous working relationship. It has been concluded by NASA that what occurred was a freak, unpredictable and tragically consequential equipment defect. After much investigation what was found was that the cables bracketing the astronaut’s space suit to the spaceship were split by a particular, random and unpredictable atmospheric pressure. It was one of those very rare things that occasionally happens. It is impossible to protect against such things because we never imagine they could happen until they happen. The final line of the NASA investigation read, Jonathan was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

 3.

It was the impact of his spacesuit slamming against the moon’s surface that woke him up.The lack of a gravitational pull had caused his fall to happen slow enough that no bones broke. There was pain but no fracturing. His spacesuit provided enough cushioning to allow him to survive a fall through space. He was the only man who had ever survived such a fall.

“Fuck!” This is what he said upon awakening.

He looked around. He was confused. He couldn’t figure anything out. He had not been educated to comprehend such things as this. It was impossible to know how much air was left. It was impossible to know where he was.

Despite having just fallen through empty space, it was not difficult for him to stand up. The lack of gravity helped to pull him up. There was an immense amount of pain in his body but he could not feel it. He was aware of some degree of fear arising in him as he wondered if he was dead. He was never one to be fooled by by a belief in a traditional God or After Life but suddenly he felt terrified that maybe he had been wrong. Maybe all of those crazed Evangelical Christians he saw on TV were right all along. What happens now? Was this my punishment for not being a believer? Is this some sort of purgatory? He could not help but think such things.

He forced himself to look around. A vast expanse. Miles and miles of large, round craters. Above him was darkness blanketed by stars. Everything was silent except for the silence. The silence made the sound of an electrical humm. He could hear ringing in his ears. There was nothing alive around him. He was frozen in  uncertainty. His nose itched and he tried moving his mouth and nose to relieve the itch. It worked for a second or two. Every time the itch returned he wanted to take off his helmet and use his hand to relieve himself, but he knew this was not an option. He moved his nose and mouth around again and again. As he waited for some sort of solution to come to him, he could feel his heart beating in his neck, lower chest and stomach.

It took some time for him to realize that this was not some kind of After Life. He was much worse off than that. While he was wiggling his nose and mouth to relieve himself of the itch, he realized that he was on the moon.

Fuck.

Before deciding to go anywhere, even though there was nowhere to go, he reviewed in his mind how he had gotten to where he was. He had been working on ISEE-3’s main thruster unit. Next to him was Jack who had been holding various wires in place. There was then a loud rubbing sound and some smoke. As he went towards the part of the cables that were smoking they broke apart, sending him tumbling into dark space. At first he panicked and he could hear Jack screaming. All of the controls in his helmet immediately went out. There was no more voice communication, no more digital reading on his helmet’s window screen. Everything went dark and the panic seemed to have subsided once he realized there was nothing that he could do. He remembered feeling a peace that he had never felt before as he tumbled around through space watching the moon, the earth and noticing the ISEE-3 getting further and further and further away. And then that is it. No more memory beyond the memory of this incredible peace.

Next thing he could recall was regaining consciousness on the moon. Once he had finished reviewing the past he thought again about what he could do now. There is something about the human mind that will continue to search for solutions, especially when there are none. He felt thirsty. The itch on his nose moved to the side of his face. All of his training as an astronaut had not prepared him for this. For the first time in his life, he had no idea what to do. When a person does not know what to do, the only choice is between remaining still or moving. He decided to walk on the moon.

4.

Before becoming an astronaut, Jonathan worked in an old McDonald’s that was converted into a laboratory for restoring and archiving old NASA space photograph’s. The organization was funded by NASA and run by an older man who went by the name BB Gun. BB Gun had worked for NASA for decades and liked to talk to others about how there was no one who had seen more of the moon’s surface than he had. “I have seen every spot on the moon at least once. I know every mountain range on the moon by heart. I feel like I have walked those mountain ranges many times before.” Jonathan was fascinated by BB Guns talks about the moon. He would describe endless wide-open spaces filled with craters and mountain ranges of incredible depth and distance.

BB Gun was also a self stylized conspiracy theorist. He didn’t believe that anyone had every walked on the moon before. “It was all a set up. In 2006 when NASA admitted that it had lost the only raw footage they had of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s first moon walk – I knew that the whole thing was a bunch of shit. Now that most of the people who had originally watched those studio produced images of men walking on the mood were dead or senile, NASA finally admitted that they had no real proof of men walking on the moon.” In order to better deal with BB Gun’s conspiratorial and trouble making views, NASA decided to put him in charge of the photography archival project where he would spend his days looking at old space photographs in an old McDonald’s in Mountain View, California. BB Gun didn’t mind, since he wanted as little as possible to do with what he called, “That bullshit space organization.”

BB Gun taught Jonathan how to archive the millions of space photos that had been reproduced from the originals. It was the old photographs of the ISEE-3 satellite that stimulated Jonathan’s first thoughts about space travel. BB Gun called the satellite a spacecraft from the disco era. It looked something like an old Sony walkman with solar panels. Jonathan was fascinated by the fact that this relic from the distant space age was still lost out there in space collecting data about solar wind. NASA was interested in being able to collect this data and the moment Jonathan heard that the satellite would be coming close to the moon’s orbit within the decade, he decided to become an astronaut.

5.

As he stood there looking out at the wide open, flat space all around him- the thought came to his mind that he could be the first man to every really walk on the moon. Inspired by the thought, Jonathan decided to walk towards nowhere. As he took his first steps he was surprised by how strange it felt. These were not normal steps. With each step, the boot of his space suit did not land directly on the moon’s surface but instead it was like he was bouncing off the tension created by the open space between his boot and the moon’s surface. It felt like bouncing up and down on a trampoline as he walked unsteadily. Each step was difficult to take since there was nothing to hold on to. It was like learning how to walk on water. When he lost his balance, which happened several times, he would fall to the ground and then bounce back up into the air. Walking on the moon is more like bouncing than it was walking, he thought to himself. Walking for fifty feet would be impossible, he thought. But he realized he could try to swim through space.

He dove forward and tried to breaststroke his way through space in the same way he flew in childhood dreams. He was able to go forward for a few feet but then fell flat onto the ground. He stood back up and tried to do the same thing again but experienced similar results, although he was able to breaststroke his way forward several more feet. He felt like a fool and laughed when he realized that he had wondered if anyone could see him. What a ridiculous thought. He had always worried about other people judging him. He decided to breast stroke his way forward again and this time it worked.

He swam through space. Who would of thought that a grown man in a spacesuit would be swimming his way through space. He laughed so hard that he fogged up the window of his helmet. Through the fog he could see the white gloves and arms of his spacesuit rowing through open space in front of him. Where were the expansive mountains that BB Gun had spoke of? He felt determined in his hallucinations. In the distance was nothing.

His arms grew weak and his body tired. He stopped breaststroking his way through space and landed flat on his stomach with his space helmet causing his head and neck to arch upwards (just as if he was laying with his head up on the arm of a couch).

This is how he slept every night in his bed. On his stomach with his head turned towards one side. His wife had often told him that he should learn how to sleep on his back or side. That it would be healthier for him to do so. He tried several times, even had her wake him up if she noticed that he had returned to sleeping on his stomach. No matter how hard he tried he was not able to get to sleep laying in any other position. Sleeping on his stomach, as unhealthy as it may be, was the only way he could feel comfortable enough to fall asleep. As he lay in the same position on the surface of the moon, memories of sleeping in his bed and holding one arm around his wife’s chest returned to him. Up until that point he had forgotten all about his past life. The shock from his current situation caused him to forget most things. Now as he lay dying, memory to return to him.

When the mind is allowed to roam free, it is strange what images that it pulls up. Events in a person’s life that were once lost forever, return in the time it takes to sneeze. Like images being pulled from a void, these scenes from a life once lived create feelings that we thought were long gone. He saw himself as a younger man, 22 or 23 dressed in a black shirt and pants and wearing a black beanie. His hair was long and he had a goatee that was shaved at the sides of his mouth. He was standing by a large red wall, just standing there staring off into space. He looked lost but felt alone. He could remember that feeling of existential loneliness that he felt in his youth like it was yesterday. He was waiting for someone or trying to fill his loneliness by watching other people. His entire life was in front of him and he felt so alone. For a moment he could remember what it felt like to be that young.

The moon’s surface looked like the ash colored lava rocks that he had walked on in Hawaii. He remembered walking across the lava with his mother behind him yelling for him to be careful. The image of the first girl he had sex with returned to him. She was sitting on the beach in her bikini, her body still 18 years old and she was smiling at him while he watched her blonde hair blowing in the light breeze. He then saw an image of his wife working in the garden. She was naked, just like she always was when she worked in the garden, and she smiled at him. He could feel her smile radiating through his body. He never appreciated her smile like he did now.

He felt guilty for not being able to appreciate her smile more. He did not wonder if he would ever see her again. Instead he hoped that he had been good enough to her that her love for him was still strong enough to last for the rest of her life.

The air was running low. He was not able to take deep breaths anymore. Too much of his air supply had been used up while imagining that he was breaststroking his way through space. He would not try to walk anymore, instead he would stay still on his stomach. He stretched his arms out by his side in order to feel more comfort. He tried to find an easier position to keep his head. Everything was silent besides the pulsations in his ears. He wondered if it really could be possible that he was the first man ever to touch the moon. BB Gun would be impressed. He thought of BB Gun sitting in front of old photographs of the moon inside that old converted McDonald’s. Then his memory ceased to generate any more images. His thoughts dissolved. He felt ready to sleep. In front of him he could see the horizon line between the surface of the moon and dark space. He remains there, still staring at the horizon line.

A SENSE OF HUMOR FOR SALE!

I noticed a sign in the window that said “sense of humors for sale.” I thought that this was a rather awkward thing to be selling and my interests were aroused. I went into the small store that was poorly lit and had many shelves without anything upon them. The walls were bare and no one stood behind the counter. There was an eery feeling that ran through the vacant shop and as I turned around to leave I was startled by a voice from the back that said, “good afternoon young man, can I be of some assistance.” I turned around and noticed a tall skinny man who looked similar to me standing behind the counter holding an unsmoked cigarette in his hand. “Yes,” I said- “I am curious about the sense of humors that you have for sale.” “Oh yes, I believe we have one left,” he replied looking up at a shelf that had nothing upon it but dust. “Would you like to try it on,” he asked?

The dressing room was illuminated by a yellow neon light and there were no mirrors on the walls. I commented upon this to the salesman who continued to smoke his un-lit cigarette and said “we do not sell anything that you would need to see on, so why have mirrors I ask you?” He seemed a little defensive so I asked him another question. “What kinds of things do you sell in this store?” he looked at me with an expression of annoyance and replied, “why don’t you try on the sense of humor and then we will talk.”

I put the sense of humor on by rubbing a very cold cream into my chest. He wanted me to take off my pants as well and rub the cream into my legs but I felt uncomfortable getting naked in this strange environment. I rubbed the cream all over my chest and arms and then was given a cloth to wipe off the residual cream. “Give it a few moments and then you will notice a change. The cream that I gave you was a starter cream. The effects only last a few minutes. If you decide that you would like to purchase a sense of humor, we have a permanent cream,” the salesman said to me as he motioned me over towards a chair where I was supposed to sit and experience the sense of humor.

Within seconds of applying the cream I started to notice a chuckle in the back of my thought. The salesman put up various pictures on the shelves and asked me to observe these photographs. There were photographs of Hillary Clinton, villages destroyed by bombs, a soldier in Iraq carrying a very large gun and of George Bush and John MacCain. There were also photographs of prisoners being tortured, the atomic bomb, people suffering from starvation, animals stuck in small cages, two men having sex with a woman, hospitals, ghettos, a man begging for money, and a dead body that seemed to be so violated that I could not tell if the body was a man or a woman. The salesman also placed white pieces of cardboard on the shelves that had words like CANCER, DEATH, POVERTY, UNEMPLOYMENT, GREED, GLOBAL WARMING, CORRUPTION and INJUSTICE written on them. The salesman said something like “now feel free to take your new sense of humor for a test drive,” and then he walked away. I sat there alone in the cold room and observed all many photographs and words for a few seconds- and then it happened.

The laughter was so intense that I was unable to control it. I laughed like I had never laughed before in my life. There was a feeling of great release that caused all of my stress to dissipate into thin air. All things that normally were causes of stress and despair for me seemed to no longer cause me any aggravation. I looked at the photos of George Bush, Hillary Clinton, the soldier and the dead body and my normal feeling of constriction and anger seemed to vanish. All I could do was laugh. I could see the humor in the ridiculousness of human behavior and I was able to laugh at all the ways that we take ourselves SO SERIOUSLY. I saw the ignorance that most human beings seem to suffer from and all I could do was find this ignorance very funny. When I looked at the words my laughter increased because I was able to see how funny it is that human beings create the very things that they fear and do not want the most. I could not believe how funny all these realizations were to me. I saw the whole divine human comedy in which we are the actors on a stage creating our own tragedy. How fucking funny is that!! We do it all to ourselves and then think that we are free!!!

Finally, after my allotted period of time was up, the salesman returned into the room and began taking the photographs and words off the shelves. “You can take off your sense of humor now,” he said as he still held the un-lit cigarette in his hand. The moment he said this to me my laughter halted as if someone had suddenly applied brakes. I wiped the tears from my face and tried to compose myself. “When you are ready please meet me back at the counter and we can talk,” he replied as he walked into the back room. I sat in the chair and tried to assess what had just taken place. I felt what turned out to be a pulled muscle in my upper back (from laughing so hard). I took a few deep breaths and decided that I wanted to purchase a sense of humor.

“We sell all sorts of potions and creams. Not only do we sell sense of humors but we also sell, happiness, IQ’s, ambition, sex drives, maturity, wisdom, feeling successful and we just ran out of love. We sell what we can to make life more worth living or should I say to make life more enjoyable. That is our intention- however, not many seem to want to purchase what we have for sale. It is almost as if people have become so attached to their suffering that they fear change. They are addicted to the way things are because that is how they think things are supposed to be. Little do they realize that we human beings have it all wrong. We have been conditioned to suffer and we do not even know it,” the salesman said to me as he sat on a stool with his arms crossed. “How much does a sense of humor cost,” I asked? “I can sell you the cream for $75.00 and it also comes with a one month warranty. If for some reason you find that it is not working for you- you are welcome to return it and I will give you your money back. I think this is a good deal because after all a good sense of humor is priceless.”