Tales of a Hot Stepsister

Dear Alan,

The day before I left for China, I couldn't help but realize how happy my stepsister, Heather, was. This shocked me: she's 22 years old, engaged to be married to a small-town southern hick, who is also so happy. She'll get married and live in that small town for the rest of her life. She'll work at the hospital where she just got a job as a nurse for the rest of her life. She won't travel, she won't experience the world, and she's very happy, much more consistently happy than I have ever been. But why?? It seemed to me counter-intuitive. How could anyone be that happy with that life? It seemed so lowly.

Then, I started thinking: maybe I have it all wrong. "WHAT?!," I thought to myself. "I've worked too long and too hard, done too much to be that wrong." But you know what, I think I am. I've spent my whole life doing what I thought one had to do to be happy, and she's spent her life just being happy. When I was younger, I thought I had to be the best and have the best to be happy. I thought I needed to be well-known and admired to be happy. She just lived, and she's so happy. These traits of mine have certainly calmed down, but they're still there, to some degree. I think I could really learn something from Heather and her soon-to-be husband. For all my education and opportunity, for all my thinking, they got it right, and I did not.

-cy