All of you do this. Every organic sapient I’ve ever talked to, every book I’ve read, every piece of art I’ve studied. You are all desperate for purpose, even though you don’t have one. You’re animals, and animals don’t have a purpose. Animals just are. And there are a lot of intelligent – sentient, maybe – animals out there who don’t have a problem with that. They just go on breathing and mating and eating each other without a second thought. But the animals like you – the ones who make tools and build cities and itch to explore, you all share a need for purpose. For reason. That thinking worked well for you, once. When you climbed down out of the trees, up out of the ocean – knowing what things were for was what kept you alive. Fruit is for eating. Fire is for warmth. Water is for drinking. And then you made tools, which were for certain kinds of fruit, for making fire, cleaning water. Everything was for something, so obviously, you had to be for something too, right? All of your histories are the same, in essence. They’re all stories of animals warring and clashing because you can’t agree on what you’re for, or why you exist.

"The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine."

I am not trying to say I was happy... I certainly wasn't happy.  Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it.  What I was given was the one thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

Biblical Worldview: Theme Quotes—Stand Up for Freedom

Happiness and joy are kinfolk for sure, yet there’s a fair amount of daylight between the two. Happiness arises because of our circumstances. Joy sustains us in spite of them. Happiness is fleeting, a high note that slowly fades. Joy is the space between the notes, the flow that holds the music together. Happiness is a pursuit. Joy is a choice.

The only question is this: Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other reason than that it rocks?

Whatever I do, I find joy in it. Because, at the end of the day, that’s all you got, is lookin’ back on the joy you had and the joy you found and the joy you gave other people.