Working It Read Online Free Page B

toward my bedroom, shedding my clothes along the way.
    Once in bed, cocooned between my eighteen hundred thread count sheets and silk duvet, I reach for my iPad on my nightstand and type “joy” into the Google search box.
    The search returns 650,000,000 hits, including a link to an IMDB page for the new movie Joy starring Jennifer Lawrence. Ugh. I am not taking life lessons from a woman who can’t even manage a red carpet walk. First, she face plants in the auditorium on the way to collect her coveted Oscar, and then she pulls a repeat performance the following year, tripping on the red carpet—while wearing a fab strapless Dior original and three million dollars’ worth of Neil Lane jewels. She’s so not BCBG. (The BCBG to which I am referring is the French slang for Bon Chic, Bon Genre , which means a person possessing good taste and a refined style, not the moderately-priced chain store selling truly uninspired garments. J-Law is très BCBG, the store.)
    I search again, this time using the phrase “how to find joy” and am pleased when it returns only 366,000,000 hits.
    I spend the next hour reading articles about how to find lasting happiness on tinybuddha.com, treehugger.com, meaningfulhappiness.com, and ohmmm.net, until I come to an article titled The Power to Change by Father True Allight. That I am even entertaining notions espoused by a New Age guru—a man named Father True Allight—tells me how very low I have sunk.
    The Power to Change
    by Father True Allight
    Andrew was a handsome young man with a successful career in Finance, a vacation home in Aspen, a vigorous social life, and a pervasive desire to take his own life. Six days after ingesting a bottle of opiates, he sat in my office, his head in his hands, repeatedly asking me what he could do to feel joy.
    He said, “I’ve made millions of dollars, bought a warehouse full of sports cars, taken the most luxurious vacations, but I have never felt true happiness. Why? What’s the matter with me?”
     
    I look away from my iPad to the ceiling, staring into the darkness, feeling Andrew’s pain. I’ve never tried to commit suicide—never would—but I understand the hollowness that might drive someone to commit such a desperate act.
    I groan.
    Or maybe consuming two bottles of wine on a nearly empty stomach has made me as emotional as Nicholas Sparks’s legion of weepy Kleenex-clutching readers.
    Still, I am curious to know what wisdom Papa Light dispensed to keep Andrew from swallowing a fistful of Vicodin.
    My answer was simple. I told Andrew that joy is not found in the pursuit of fame and riches. True happiness can only be experienced by those who live spherically, those who possess a sense of purpose beyond selfish pleasure, pursue their passions with enthusiasm, demonstrate compassion for those less fortunate, and actively seek to spread joy…
     
    I stop reading and consider whether I meet Papa Light’s criterion for living a joyful life.
    Do I possess a sense of purpose beyond selfish pleasure? Not really. Work is my only purpose. Working hard enough to become a luminary in the L’Heure Universe.
    Do I pursue my passions with pleasure? Passions? What passions? Do I even have passions? I drop my iPad onto my chest and press my fingertips against my eyelids. Think, Fanny. Think! You must have passions. Passions. Passions. Fashions. Yes! I am passionate about fashion. I pursue sample sales and fashion trends with great passion. Somehow, I don’t think this is what Papa Light meant when he wrote about pursuing one’s passions.
    Do I demonstrate compassion to those less fortunate and seek to spread joy? I might not have ever volunteered at a soup kitchen like Ethan Catfish Dubois, but I have demonstrated compassion. I have. Just last week, my assistant came to work complaining about having a splitting migraine, and I let him leave an hour early—with pay. Never mind that someone would have to bury a hatchet in my skull before I would leave