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Issue 3 (fall 2k)

Kant says that if we really want something, we're not deserving of it. If we think we deserve something, we're not deserving. If we do things we should do instead of what we want do, we're not really virtuous and don't deserve happiness. Have to always do what's right without a second thought before we're different enough from everyone to deserve happiness most.

So I had to come to conclusion that I really don't deserve happiness more than anyone else. And this thought is the same for thinking that a starving Ethiopan deserves happiness no more than an American aristocrat; it's about morals, not experience. I guess.

So all those years I thought I deserved a girlfriend, in all my basic goodness and self-conscious well-intentions. Having this now...I understand how little it's about deserving anything. So maybe Kant's point was irrelevant anyway. Then again, I don't think I can say I'm truly happy yet...at least not in his definition of it.

Don't expect much, I think. You can't know what you'll get, no matter how much you think you deserve it. It'll usually be something different than you thought anyway, so you may as well give up rationalizing your losses. Listen to some melancholy indie music. That sort of underexposed soul will make you feel better about what you ended up with. Maybe like I kept this so vague to try and apply to some situation besides my own. No one's ended up with quite what I have and I haven't got what anyone else does.

So no one's deserving of what they believe they should get. It won't stop anything; everything's a surprise.