One of my favorite books to read my kids was a Bernstein Bear episode called "The Bike Lesson."  In it, the Dad gets his son a bike, but before he'll let his son ride it, he wants to show him how to do it. . .and every page, he ends up having an accident on the bike.  At one point, as his son is rescuing him from a pile of chickens or a swamp with quicksand, the Dad says, "That was a lesson in what NOT to do."
In that jocular spirit, I will post the occasional photo or two that shows what can go awry on a project.

Two today:

First, the Ted Baker store on Grant Avenue in Union Square shows what happens when an architect forgets to factor in the depth of the hardware on an entry door:

Every once in a while I see a design solution that is truly astonishing, often in the most unusual of places.  At the corner of  Olympic Boulevard and Robertson Boulevard  on the Westside of LA, there is an ARCO station that redefines what a gas station can look like:

“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”

These three unalienable rights come from the Declaration of Independence that every American school kid learns by heart.   Everyone understands what they mean – or do we?  I certainly thought I did.  But as with many things, it’s much more complicated. . . and the complexity, the history and the nuance all lead down avenues of intellectually provocative inspiration.

Whether for the "founding fathers" or for the Generation X, Y or Z, everyone gets "Life" – the right not to be killed by Redcoats, or crack-heads, or even the police.  "Liberty" also resonates – it’s not just the freedom of speech but also (as the joke goes) freedom after speech, and all the other freedoms as well, including that one we all forget, the right to petition the government for the redress of grievance.

But what about this phrase, “Pursuit of Happiness”?  It’s used all the time, even (with a little spelling tweak) as the title for Chris Gardner’s memoir.  We use the phrase all the time, but do we all know what it means and, more important, what it meant to the framers at the time?

Scratch the surface and you’ll encounter the factoid that Jefferson derived it from the phrase, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property,” that John Locke used in one of his essays.  Sometimes it’s phrased as the “Pursuit of Estates.”

“Pursuit of Property” fits with what we are not taught in school but later learn about the founding fathers, that they were a bunch of acquisitive land grabbers and merchants who fled Europe to make money here in the American colonies.  So you think you have discovered the real intent of the founding fathers, self-justification of their own capitalist greed.

With the “Pursuit of Property,” I recognized both the hypocrisy of the landed gentry who made up the "founding fathers" – men of property who originally allowed only their own kind to vote – as well as the political genius of the Declaration, which was intended to appeal to the broadest possible audience.   Even if you agree with Proudhon that "Property is theft," who of any generation could ever be against "happiness"?

A Distinction without a Difference

As it turns out, at the time Locke and Jefferson were writing, “property” and “estates” were used more generally as terms to describe an enterprise where an individual could prosper from his own skills – not by working for wages for someone else (“wage slavery,” as it is called), but by parlaying the acumen one acquires as an apprentice into a business that contributes to one’s own prosperity.

As much as we think they are distinct, “happiness” is no different from “property.”  The pursuit of “property,” in fact, is the path that leads to happiness, not because you can spend money, although there’s nothing wrong with that, but rather because you deploy the skills you have acquired to generate revenue yourself.

You start a business.  Or you invent a product that gets a patent.  You produce art that pays royalties.  Or you acquire real estate that produces rent.  By whatever means you choose to produce revenue for yourself, independently, you transform yourself from a wage slave into a master of your own fate, in control of your own prosperity.

The “pursuit of happiness” – that is, the “Property” that can make your prosperity independent – is a pursuit the Declaration tells us is one of our unalienable rights.  Neither Redcoat nor Commonwealth colonial, neither faceless corporation nor soulless bureaucracy, can take away this right we have to pursue our own prosperity, on which our happiness depends.

With Rights Come Responsibilities

But once you understand the importance of this concept, you realize that the “pursuit of property” is more than just your right.  It is your duty.  Each of us has the potential to become anything – even a “skinny kid” from Honolulu can become President of the United States.  It is a potential that can be easily squandered becoming a gear in the machine, a cog in the wheel, just another corporate tool making other people rich.  Instead, to realize your full potential, you have to pursue this happiness, this property, these estates.  Only this pursuit will make you the “you” you have the potential to become.

It’s marvelous to have the Declaration tell you that the government cannot get in your way – you have an unalienable right to make your own way in the world and achieve happiness through the independence of your prosperity.

But you also must get out of the way, out of your own way.  “Happiness” thus construed does not entitle you to a sunset on a beach on some tropical isle.  It may be counterintuitive, but your unalienable right entitles you instead to the tireless, dogged, relentless pursuit of your own independence, which is no easy task.

It is easy to lose sight of the benefits of truly independent prosperity.  There will be so many business issues to distract you – insurance, taxes, networking, fee proposals, invoicing, shoplifting, you name it – the “trillion trivialities” of life that can sap all your waking energy.  You may find yourself exhausted, frustrated, cash flow negative, and taxed twice over.

Plus, you are not guaranteed to be happy – you have an unalienable right to Life and an unalienable right to Liberty, but not to Happiness itself.  Only the Pursuit of it is guaranteed, not the achievement of it. 

But only in the pursuit of your property – whether it’s stock that pays dividends or a patent that yields royalties, whether an apartment building where rent exceeds upkeep or a business that spins off cash – is there any prospect of true accomplishment.

Like Sadness and Joy, the paired emotions in the ingenious movie “Inside Out,” the exhaustion and the accomplishment go together, indivisible from each other, and each the richer and more poignant because of it.

With true happiness deriving from the pursuit of property, other paths lead ultimately to ruin – the desolation of wasted time as a wage slave, the veal pen cubicles of crushed dreams, the empty choices where you consider one job better than another because of its dental plan.  That’s the modern veneer of “prosperity,” the Potemkin Village where “gainful employment” masks the corrosion of your liberty, and where your regular paycheck papers over the atrophy of your potential.

Launching Towards Happiness

And so, with this blog for the launch of The Bassan Consultancy Web site (made possible by the skills of my son, Nathaniel), we set sail towards the highest form of happiness. . . and find happiness in its pursuit.