Happiness

Happiness?

Helen Keller once stated, "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." The article "Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets" by, Jack Finny is a perfect example how one can get so wrapped up in his or her life own life of hopes of success and of having the perfect life, one tends to forget those around them are the true providers of happiness. Tom Benecke was a man who thought that he knew what happiness was. When his image to happiness flies out the window, Tom realizes that happiness is only a blink away. Tom Benecke blindness eventually causes him to find his true happiness.

Above Lexington Ave, it was a dark windy night as Tom was working in his office at his eleventh floor apartment. That night was when Tom's blindness allowed him to discover his happiness. Imagine wanting something so bad that you would risk your own life to have it? Tom did exactly that, living his life with mainly with the image of success and money constantly running through his head he states, "Beginning of the long, long climb to where he was determined to be, at the very top " (Finny, 21). Within the dark windy night was the night when Tom decided to choose his own fate. Tom steeped out onto the ledge of his eleventh story apartment building to retrieve the yellow sheet of paper which he thought as his key to happiness and success. While looking down upon the streets below him, he realized that he truly blind. Trying to imagine what he was thinking to risk his own life just for a piece of paper. Tom had all that he had needed for happiness he had his wife Clare, he a job and he had his health.

"Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold, the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul" (Democritus).