another CLICK by Santiago Peralta

CLICK
It being 9 am in the morning and just arriving to the model’s apartment makes me wanna go to bed, but I can’t just yet. With the reaction of my perfect moment, I am compelled to share yet another story with you while it is still fresh in my mind…
Tuesday, June 17th… 10 PM my time, so 7 PM Arizona time. One of my best friends, Mike Anderson calls me up because we had agreed that we were losing touch a little bit and that we wanted to continue our talks about life, and philosophy and essentially our evolution as people. Ready for a long conversation about life, I am stunned by his reply of “I am going to pick up my new car” to the question what are you up to? I immediately ask for a development of his past statement and he quickly responds that he is going to pick up his new Jaguar XF. Suddenly everything clicks, and I remember that he told me that he entered a contest to win a Jaguar XF and today was the drawing, at 7:30 at Casino Arizona.
Both of us being followers of the “Secret,” we get in the mentality that he already won the car and the only step is to receive it. After a few idealistic, yet potentially true phrases exchange, he asks for my help to win the car. As his best friend, that was a rhetorical question at best. My next move was meditation; I knew that if he wanted that car, he needed my positive energy and the fastest way to get there was through a concentration of thankful and positive experiences.
After we hang up the phone, I go outside, sit down on the ground and pray. Not pray for him to win the car, or pray for him to be happy, but I pray to get into a positive trance. I think of vacations, trips, moments in my life that made my life, family, friends, but most of all, smiles. Smiles are what make me one of the happiest people on earth, and just thinking of all the people that care about me and that had genuinely smiled at me in the past propels me into the state of bliss that is not only unrivaled, but also unaffected by the material world. By now, my smile takes up most of my face and my eyes are already watering. Seconds after I achieve this state, Mike calls back.
He had gone to the wrong casino, and it was already 7:45, but fortunately he had just found out that he had until 8:10 to register. I could sense his energy through his tone of voice and the emotion in his speech was unmistakable; he was where I was. For no reason now, two best friends were laughing on the phone telling each other how amazing it was to be in this state and how fun it was going to be to drive this car. Ha ha nothing could bring us down… we were once again at the top of the world.
Mike then meets up with our mutual friend Ron and our phone call comes to an end. Our state of mind, however, did not falter. 3000 miles away we fed off each other’s energy.
My manager calls me up shortly after the conversation with Mike ends and announces to me that I have to wake up at 4 am so I can do a morning show for a News station. Sensing his fear and frustration, I gladly accept this job.
One more text message is exchanged in between Mike and me… a wish for good luck. I attempt to fall asleep, but at 12:10 am, I get a phone call from Mike saying that he did not get the Jaguar, some black guy had gotten it were his expressions. The voice was not content, but not bothered. And to my astonishment, not for one second I had lost faith or happiness.
4, 4:05, 4:10… ring ring ring… My alarms go off and a touch on the shoulder of my agent accompanies my last alarm. With the gentle, “Santiago, it’s time to wake up,” a playful “I’m up, What’s crackin?” responds. What? Why was I so energetic?? Why was I so happy? This was just stupid, now. I am not a morning person, it is 4 am, on 3 and a half bad hours of sleep. I am confused. As I make it to the kitchen half-dressed, I chow down with a tiny red delicious on one hand, and a carton of “Hawaii” juice (Yes, that’s the pineapple, peach, orange kind) on the other. Brushing my teeth, I noticed that I was actually rather awake. I finished getting ready, grabbed a Cliffbar, threw my backpack on and shoved the Ipod default headphones in my ears. I made my way down stairs by 4:34, out the door by 4:35. Strangely, right on time.
Wait, I realized I didn’t have my train ticket one minute into the walk to the Ditmars Blvd. subway station. Picked up a light jog back to the apartment, received a very strange “what the hell are you doing back?” look from my agent, which was replied by an “I forgot my train ticket” smile by me. Again, running a little late, I calmly jogged to the train station, but not before I swapped headphones. I did not feel like being disturbed by the outside world, I was way too happy, and horn honks and city noises just did not appeal to me at 5 in the morning. So I put on some, might I say pretty baller, in-ear, noise-cancelling headphones on and I threw the other ones in the top pocket of my backpack.
Sitting in the subway listening to Go On by Jack Johnson, it came to me. It clicked. Damn, I can’t believe I did not think about it before. My accomplice in always being positive, Mike, had to hear this. I flipped open my Krazr, and texted, word-by-word, “Wow something just slapped me in the face… hard lol… the contest last night wasn’t for the car, it was for the energy… you noticed how excited we were about something so minute… it was an opportunity to give thanks and be as happy as we can be… we re never gonna win contests like that, we work too hard for s**t to be that easy… If it was that easy, we would enjoy it for like 10 minutes and then it wouldn’t matter anymore… But because you still don’t have that car, I don’t know about you but I woke up at 4 am happy as f**k overflowing with energy and that’s when it hit me… its to show us that every moment is an opportunity to be happy no matter what happens… make sense?” Yes, I actually sent that long of a text at 5 am. The response came in the form of an “I love u and ur right.” A few more texts were exchanged, but that is not the point.
We sent out to the universe, that we want to be happy, that we enjoy positive energy and that we thrive on it… What do we get in return? A car? Hell, no. What would something so materialistic and simple do for us? What is 10 minutes of happiness in comparison with days worth of it? What we got in return was the opportunity to be happy. The opportunity to call your best friend who is all the way across the country and unify your energies to make a random moment the happiest that we can. The opportunity to crystallize a simple hope into a powerful happiness without the hope ever becoming concrete. And what did we do? We did just that. We took a moment, and we made it our moment. We used our human nature to develop into a fulfillment of desire without anything becoming true in this material world. Everything happened in our minds, “hearts” and “souls.” So maybe we are wrong, maybe this material world is not all there is. Maybe our true happiness does come from the inside. Maybe we do need to change our inside, before we can even think about changing our surroundings. Or maybe, as we change our inside, and as we fill ourselves with positive energy, the outside world adapts to us; it adapts to our own energy.
Maybe someday, this will click for you too. Maybe, it already has. Just make sure that when it does, take it for what it is. And be honest with yourself. Don’t lie to yourself and tell yourself that that is what you believe in and then get mad because you spilt a cup of coffee, or because you have “too much homework,” or whatever your self-handicap may be. Just remember, that at the end of the day, you can’t fool yourself about being happy. It is your right to be happy, and it is your job that you are happy. It is your responsibility. So maybe it is time that you make it happen, otherwise, what’s the point?