The freedom to drive 2500 miles and dip my toe in the rivers of Yosemite Valley, turn around and drive home to the Great Lakes knowing that I never really had to leave to find security or recovery, to me is the ultimate defiance of privilege as an American because leaving home is the hardest thing to do when it’s made too easy, and vital at the same time, for every American.
There is no harm in privilege when it is available to everybody here in one form or another.
It is easier to think of the pursuit of happiness as an actual pursuit versus what defines happiness. I have gone way out of my way in pursuit of happiness for myself without the thought as to what people in different circumstances have to overcome in finding happiness, even without their leaving home. I know other people have gone way out of their way to assure that I have the means and rights to traverse this country in pursuit of happiness.
Some people in this country are not privileged to make a similar journey. I accept that if I get in the way of another person’s ability to have the same experience I am in violation of their human dignity and rights. I don’t agree that any person can say I have violated their right to the same pursuit of happiness when they can just as easily find a way to buy a bus ticket to California, dip their toes and return home. I can’t provide everybody with a bus ticket.
If I were a landlord and my tenant opted to travel to California for a week instead of paying rent I don’t think that makes me responsible for keeping them from going. If I were their employer it doesn’t make me responsible for them staying back by expecting them to show up to work on Monday. It is up to the individual. They have obligations to fulfill. They may have little mouths to feed. They may be stuck but as a landlord or employer I am concerned with paying my own way, not theirs.
Of course there are different circumstances as to who is being violated here like if a person doesn’t feel safe in their own home or work environment. If they are in a fight for their property or person within a system that keeps them home, or away from home for that matter, even if not by force they are unable to get out, then working to only pay rent and to eat is a reality that is born from circumstance and the pursuit for them is more like providing for happiness.
I maybe haven’t done enough for people out in my community. But that may not be what makes me happy. Is it a violation of my pursuit of happiness if I have to pander to yours?
We have the right to not do much or to not provide for others but that too can be a violation. One shouldn’t have the happy pursuit to keep others down but on the flip side those people have a right to be down, to not leave home. It is the pursuit of happiness that makes happiness a right, not the explanation of what makes us happy, so let the pursuit be to lead us home.
When we attach happiness to freedom and equality we are giving the landlord and employer the benefit of the doubt as it relates to any good intentions. I do not suggest that they want to keep us down, as if that is what makes them happy, when they are providing a home and a means for paying for it in their own pursuit of happiness. Happiness has nothing to do with keeping people down. Happiness has everything to do with making home the hardest place to leave and the pursuit in doing so the privilege.
Francis Erich McElroy 