Happy House

House’s happiness floats just above his head – just out of reach, taunting him by being so painfully close. And yet the control/string is in House’s hand. He could be holding happiness if only he could pull the string, but something stops him. Certainly he’s not incapable of pulling the string (although this may, at times, be his guise). Perhaps he doesn’t want happiness. Part of him doesn’t even believe in its reality. It’s an elusive, helium-filled balloon, which might offer a brief high but would leave him empty in the long-run. And maybe the part of him that does believe in and/or want to obtain happiness is held back by a self-loathing, which tells him he doesn’t deserve happiness or an arrogant mask that says he doesn’t need happiness and is doing fine without it. Part of him thinks he deserves to be tortured by this balloon – this image of something he cannot allow into his life. And so he dangles it close – always in view but never truly in reach.

We can say all these excuses for not pulling the balloon into his hands are the results of his childhood, society or profession. I suppose, ultimately, they are the sum of all his experiences and his birth-given qualities. They create the human condition: a wrestle with a balloon.