The Pursuit of Happiness.

Thanks to Rama – the brother of the infamous Rima Fauzi – for posting “Blame It On the Boogie” lyrics to one of my Facebook statuses, now I’ve got that Jackson Five song stuck in my head. It is an undeniably catchy song and no matter how old it is, you can still groove to it. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what the video clip looked like so I looked it up on Youtube.

Even back then, little Mike already knew how to dance so well. It just came so naturally, and he was a good looking boy too. Which makes me wonder why he did all those surgeries to himself, because I personally think there’s nothing wrong with his looks at all. He’d got it all – the talent to dance, to sing and to entertain people. He even touched millions of hearts with his meaningful lyrics when talking about peace for the world and caring for the earth.

Some say it was something to do with his self-confidence and his dark childhood, as his father was very abusive to him and his brothers. For Joe Jackson, the Jackson Five seemed to be no more than his personal money-making machines that could be physically and mentally abused, just because he could. And yet, out of all the five brothers, Michael seemed to be the one that was proven to be the most successful. Whether it was his strength or perseverance, it was obvious that he could make something positive out of his abusive childhood.

And yet …

I still don’t understand why he would continue to abuse himself for the rest of his life, even when his father could no longer do that to him anymore. He made himself became known to the rest of the world, creating songs that touched people’s heart, spreading the message of peace and love. With all the things that he had achieved, he should be the happiest man in the world. People loved him no matter what. His fans shed tears even by the sight of him. Simply said, a lot people loved Michael for who he was. And yet, Michael never seemed to love himself.

Some people say he was sick. Mentally disturbed. Or just plain addicted to plastic surgery. But we all knew what really happened. Or perhaps we guessed?

It was the feeling of never being good enough. Never being appreciated by the people that you look up to. Never truly loved by those who supposed to love you the most. Now, you could be the richest person in the world, but if you didn’t have love, you simply had nothing. And being an artist he was, not being appreciated by those who mattered to you, could be a slow and painful death. It didn’t matter that thousands or millions of people loved him to death, if his own parents were unappreciative towards what he had achieved.

Michael wasn’t the only one who suffered from this mental disease. Many people do.  The difference was that, Michael could channel out most of that energy into something productive. Most people, unfortunately, channel it out by making others as miserable as they are. If Michael chose to abuse himself, most people choose to abuse others.

These are the same type of people you would see in your neighborhood, gossiping and badmouthing other people just so that they could feel better about themselves. Or the people you would see at work, trying to kiss ass and do manipulative things because they had issues with their self-confidence and their self-worth. The people who were incapable of saying anything nice about others because they were just too unhappy to begin with.

Unhappiness could be caused by many things. Perhaps these people never really had love in their homes. They were unappreciated, left alone and abandoned. Or perhaps because these people thought they never deserved to be happy. But most of all, unhappiness came from within each of us. We either try to be happy or we won’t.

When a person is unhappy, the logic is that he himself is not able to make other people happy. If he can make peace with himself, then he can learn to be happy, thus learn how to make others happy. And it all goes back to whether or not this person wants to change, and whether or not this person could accept himself.

Accepting who you are, and making peace with yourself is one of the most important step to be happy. As long as you keep all the negative feelings bottled up inside, it’s impossible for you to even be aware that you’re missing out on a lot of fun things out there.

The question is; how many of us are willing to change?

Happiness is what we’re all searching for. And each of us has our own definition. Despite all the things Michael had done to himself, he will always be remembered as the King of Pop whose songs had inspired people to love.

So what would you like to be remembered as? Because the choice is always yours.