“And?”

“And, I strongly disagree with Aristotle on this point.”

It was one of the central arguments of my thesis. My position, essentially, was: What’s the point of assessing happiness after the fact, when it’s too late to do anything about it? Postscript happiness wasn’t happiness at all. Maybe it was contentment. Maybe it was proof of a well-lived life. But it was not the fundamental definition of the concept.

Back then, when Sid and I were formulating my outline, he suggested that I first define happiness; consider how that definition was relevant to one’s choices, values, and pursuits; and then compare that to what Aristotle had laid out in Nicomachean Ethics.

The questions I’d wanted to explore were: What is real happiness? “Real happiness” being the term I used to distinguish the concept from pleasure. And once I had that figured out: Is a human being obligated to pursue real happiness? If so, is he or she obligated to pursue it under any circumstance?

I thought long and hard about these questions and concluded that there were a handful of obstacles to real happiness, the two worth mentioning now being fear and a lack of freedom.

And while Sid supported my assessment, he also suggested, in his gentle Sid manner, that if I wanted my work to mean anything beyond a piece of paper, I was going to have to learn how to encode what I was writing somewhere inside of me and use it as a GPS.

“The truth is,” Sid sighed, “you’re very good at burying your head in your books and having intellectual conversations about all this stuff until you’re blue in the face, but you don’t practice what you know to be true.”

He was right, but it still hurt to hear him say it. Or, rather, it hurt that he could so easily recognize this defect in me. He saw the hurt on my face too, saw me begin to retreat inside myself, but he didn’t back down. He knew me too well to let me get away with that.

“You need to hear this, Joe. You happen to be unusually self-aware, and that means you have an obligation to live truthfully, specifically because you’re cognizant of what the truth is. It’s not too late for you, you know. Because what’s the alternative? To continue like you have been and suffer the consequences? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? Suffering the consequences?”

There was a small stack of papers on the table, and Sid set his palm down on top of it, as if he were trying to keep it from blowing away in a breeze. He looked at me with his kind, sleepy eyes and said, “There’s no such thing as inaction, Joe. There’s only choice and consequence. Do I need to remind you of what you so interestingly outlined in your conclusion?”

I shrugged, hoping he would get the hint and drop it.

Pointing his finger in the direction of my heart, he said, “You concluded that happiness is a consequence of choice.”