Yesterday, I was at the SF US Half Marathon. It was not a pleasant experience - waking up at 5:30 AM, driving an hour to SF, looking for parking in the worst-parking area of the city, walking 20 minutes in my sandals… all this in drizzling rain and freakin’ cold sea breeze.
Waiting for the marathon to finish was no party either. I had to poo and of course, nothing but port-a-potties with absolutely no ventilation. The sample vendors were stingy and I was friggin’ hungry. Worst yet, the MP3 player I was using had only 20 songs so I was repeating the same crap over and over again.
Yeap, I was one whiney little biatch.
When the marathoners were coming around towards the finish line, I noticed this homeless Asian guy on the other side of the street. There was a live band playing rock music, and being the crazy man that he is, there was probably a party going on his head. Pretty standard sight to see in big cities like SF.
I don’t mean just “partying”… he was playing his air-guitar, pseudo-dancing, and best of all, smiling like a freakin’ kitty kat:

(well, he looked like an animal of some kind with all that hair.)
This continued for at LEAST 20 minutes. Maybe even longer. Of course, if you’re a normal person, the polite thing to do is to not stare. (Side point: If you wanted to be a terrorist/conspirator trying to be in-conspicuous, the last person that should do it is a good looking man or even worse, a good looking woman. In fact, don’t even look average or blend in. Instead dress like a homeless person. NOBODY, and I mean even security personnel, will look at you. In fact, they look away and you become invisible.)
Not me. I stared at this dude for the entire duration. I think he got uncomfortable or something because he eventually stopped smiling and left. Who knows? Maybe he was just hungry.
But I got to thinking… how is he some damn happy? From my perspective, if you’re a homeless person living in a cold city like SF, life would suck and every minute of my life would be one long torture. But apparently not!
I guess happiness isn’t a factor of external factors, like people, events, money, etc. It is WAAAAAAAAAY better to be crazy and happy than sane and miserable.
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