All names and identifying details in this narrative have been altered to protect privacy. The scenes represent composite experiences and reflections from critical care shadowing, not specific individuals or cases. Dialogue is paraphrased and not verbatim.
Here’s something that’s going to blow your mind: you can’t become happy by chasing happiness. It’s like trying to fall asleep by trying really hard to fall asleep — the trying IS the problem. Philosophers call this “the paradox of hedonism,” and John Stuart Mill learned it the hard way.
I had to excuse myself to the bathroom after this one. Just sat there in the stall crying, trying to be quiet. It felt embarrassing, but also, I couldn’t stop because it felt like something inside me was finally breaking open.
It sounds counterintuitive, but trying to avoid all suffering can make you more miserable. If your life is organized around avoiding discomfort—skipping hard classes, avoiding difficult conversations, numbing out with Netflix and social media—it’s not working, is it?
The sound is unmistakable. Click-clack. Click-clack. Hard plastic striking frozen asphalt. It is the music of 5:00 AM, played out in the dark parking lots of the Dolomites. I was three years old when I first learned the rhythm of it, my small, gloved hand lost inside my father’s palm.
Okay, so if happiness isn’t the next achievement or perfect Instagram moment, what is it? Enter Aristotle, who’s honestly the GOAT when it comes to this stuff. He had this word—eudaimonia—that gets translated as “happiness” but really means something closer to “flourishing” or “living well.”
I’m sitting here three days later, and I still can’t get it out of my head. The movie, I mean. Wicked. I went because everyone was going and I needed a break from studying for finals and maybe because I was curious about all the hype but I wasn’t expecting… this. I wasn’t expecting to leave the theater feeling like someone had reached into my chest and rearranged everything.
There will always be that strange feeling—the fear of not belonging, the sense that everything I do is so tiny, so fragile and transient that nothing will remain.
The November air was 50 degrees when we lined up outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I adjusted my layers—comfortable but warm, as the email instructed—and felt my heart racing. It had been so long since I’d heard Italian sung like this.
I know you’re probably sitting in your dorm room right now, stressed about midterms, wondering if you picked the right major, scrolling through Instagram and feeling like everyone else is happy and has their life figured out except you. Spoiler alert: they don’t.
