Doing The Math

We seek to become one with our inner misery -- it's a form of happiness. And so appears, via some hack TV show, the answer to a question I'd been asking myself for quite some time now: Why do I feel this profound contentment with being a lazy, lonely, gluttonous, addiction-prone, mediocrity-junkie?

I have had this on my mind a lot, moreso lately. As it turns out, I've been complaining incessantly to my brother about how generous I am as a friend and how all my friends are so selfish and take
me for granted. How they, unlike me, have no sense of compromise and I, therefore, must bend
to their every whim and fancy without complaint. How I've in fact endebted myself, bankrupted myself even, on that very premise. That I'll generously compromise my own wishes without them even knowing that I have just to avoid having to tell them how repulsively selfish they are.
Most of them.
My brother just says "everybody's selfish, people are selfish"
My automatic response to this is always "I'm not selfish, and I'm a person, so people aren't selfish"
But I don't feel sorry for myself -- very much the opposite -- I've been almost proud to be that
guy, that friend, that open mind
Then again, I suppose I do have my own selfishness. So in the end I guess I am selfish, but in an altogether different way. My social life is not self-serving. It's not imperative that we do what I want to do in order for me to have a good time, unlike most of my friends.
I just wish to live my life on my terms and I paint that no other color than selfish. So yes, I have a bit of selfishness in me but not at the expense of my friends, you dig?

But, while I've spent the last 10 or so years loathing myself over my inability to join modern society on its terms, I now find myself incredibly comfortable with it. See, I guess I've just given off this impression of generosity, and I've peeled these layers of generosity, shed them just so and stripped them completely from me, to the point where I no longer wish to be that friend, that guy.
I'm happy in my inner-misery, my core, my actual person

So this is my Pythagorean Theory, my algabraic solution to the human "problem" (I know it sounds like a Hitler-ism, but I promise it's not so extreme). I have turned the human being into a mathematical equation:

when "x"= the human core, the actual person

and "L"= Layers of outer behaviors, the percieved person

and "n" = number of years spent shedding "L"

then: L - n = x

You give and you give and you give and these layers of the percieved human
strip away over time, and eventually you reach the human core, the most primative element
of human nature
It may not be the happiness we seek, but it is a form of happiness
I have arrived at x. Now I wait, happily, for the rest of the human race to join me.