The Search for Happiness

Her name was Maria. She was an American citizen of full Korean ethnicity … a sixth-grade student of mine back when I first began teaching, at age thirty-two.

One day Maria asked me if I had been happy at the other jobs where I had worked. I told her I had enjoyed them all in some way, but that I felt I would be happiest with teaching as a career. I also told her of my goal to knock on the door of every student I would ever teach.

A little later on during the year, while I was having lunch with my students, Maria told me the story of ‘The Queen Who Sought Happiness’. I had never heard the story before, nor have I heard it since, but it went something like this:

{“There once was a queen who sought to be happy. But no matter how many “things” she had in her palace, she found happiness to be fleeting, always temporary.

So she journeyed to visit an old hermit in his mountain cave. “How do I find happiness?” she asked.

The hermit replied, “You must go through the village and knock on one thousand doors. But you must do so in disguise.”

The queen at first ignored the hermit’s advice. But no matter how hard she tried to fill her life with happiness from things … her heart grew ever more hollow. So one day, in desperation, she dressed in disguise as a beggar woman and slipped down into the village. There, she knocked on the first door.

A poor man and woman invited her in for what little food they had. “We don’t have much,” they told the ‘beggar woman’, “but what we have we will share with you.”

The queen quickly returned to her castle and ordered her best cook to take food to the family at the first house in the village. “But do not reveal that the queen has sent you!” she instructed.

The queen (still in disguise) knocked on another door the next day. There a family was crying, tenderly tending to their sick youngest child, who was dying.

The queen quickly left and returned to her castle, giving orders to her personal physician to go immediately to the second house in the village and save the sick child there. “But do not reveal that the queen has sent you!” she instructed.

The next day, the queen (again in disguise) knocked on a third door. And so it continued, day after day.

Once the “beggar woman” had knocked on one thousand doors, she returned to the hermit.

Now dressed as the queen, she smiled at the hermit and said, “You knew I would not find lasting happiness. There is too much death in this world. Too much sorrow. Too much pain. Too much injustice. But I did find something much greater and more lasting; I found meaning in my life.”}

After finishing the story, Maria said to me, “Mr. Talley, just like the queen, by knocking on doors you will find meaning in your life.”

Maria not only demonstrated herself to be a child wise beyond her years, she also proved to be a prophet.

No, I didn’t manage to knock on every single door of the two thousand children (and nearly two thousand jail inmates) that I taught over my long career.

But thanks to a certain little girl … I came “pretty darn close”.

Nor have I attained lasting happiness in this life. Too many slings and arrows have come my way (as they do toward us all). I know they always will, in some form or fashion. Such is life.

However, during my journey I found (as did the queen) something far greater, more satisfying, and more lasting than happiness.