The other night my wife and I encountered a taxi driver who was also a philosopher.  He wasn’t an Uber driver, but one of the conventional taxi drivers who is probably slowly going out of business. ( I refuse to have any part in deliberately making people more insecure than they already are).

He told us,  ” When I was younger my dad died.  He was in his fifties.  It was a shock.  I thought I could be already half way through my own life.  I decided from then on that my objective should be happiness.  I have made this the objective of my life. If you chat with passengers and tell them you are happy, they are momentarily  speechless, but almost always reply, ‘Then business must be great.’  Automatically, you see, it is assumed that business success is all that matters and that money brings you happiness.  An increase in revenue is a cause for exhilaration.  But it isn’t true.  I don’t want a fancy house and fancy vacations; I want contentment and peace of mind.  The more money you have the more stress you have managing it and trying to avoid people stealing it.  And then you never know why others want to be friends with you.  No, I am a happy man.  Taken to its ultimate conclusion, you can’t spend all of it anyway.”  (I have paraphrased part of this, accurately , I think)

I didn’t tell him he was an Epicurean.  Nor did I tell him that he seemed to be making a more thorough job of living an Epicurean life of happiness than maybe I was!  It was a pity the taxi ride was so short.