I want to believe that happiness exists, is it true?

Finding happiness- An example

On an island with a total population of 25 people, there are 24 happy people. Then one day a prince from another country found out about the island and came to its shores. The prince met the 25th person who claimed that he didnt find happiness on the island. He decided to investigate this claim further and see if any of the other 24 people were unhappy as well. 

The 2nd happiest guy on the island said that he had a friend that wasn’t too happy either but gave no more details about it. This started a chain reaction of statements where each person would give only vague information about those they knew personally – without actually knowing those they spoke about directly.  In all they provided information for 5 individuals, giving 4 definite statements and 1 unconfirmed statement.\

The prince was extremely confused by all this but decided to go around asking each of the 4 definite people for more detailed info on their friends. The first 3 wished not to speak about it, while the last one went into a lot of detail: He said that “a few years ago he met this guy, who wasn’t too happy either. He didn’t get happiness indeed. Sometimes he would do stuff like smile and seem okay, but then he’d always fall back into un-happiness”  He had even visited his friend in his home sometime later and found out that his new puppy had died sometime after they had last spoken.

“I believe him”, said the prince and moved on to the next definite person for questioning.

There again the answer was a simple “no comment” and a refusal to speak about it further. The prince didn’t find happiness by this but he had no time to dwell on sadness as the next person – who directly knew one of those 3 people who refused to talk about their friends – gave his statement: “One time my friend told me that she thought it would be nice if maybe they’d all just disappear, but then she quickly said that she didn’t really mean it.”  The prince realized how confusing this must have been for them and decided not to bother the last 2 definite people with more questions.

He moved on instead and asked each vague statement guy what he knew about the 4 others:

1st vaguest guy:

“Hum, I don’t think they are happy. They keep to themselves most of the time.”  The prince then asked “Who are you talking about? You know that you aren’t allowed to talk about them directly?” The vaguest guy said “Oh, oh right! Well, remember that time when I told you how happy my friend was? He wasn’t so happy after all…”

2nd vaguest guy:

This time the prince got a little confused and asked “Wait what- How well you know him again?” Only for the 2nd vaguest guy to reply “Oh yeah, he’s one of my oldest friends on this island. We used to be such good friends, but then we started arguing about which type of ball is better: Soccer or Football. I know he really loves soccer and I only like football. We haven’t been as close since.”

3rd vaguest guy:

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t feel so good either… You know, with everything that’s going on in the world?” – “What do you mean, what kind of stuff is going on in the world right now?” – “Well there was some war and shit a while ago…”  The prince got mad at this guy for not being able to specify anything at all and demanded from him to give more information about the 3 definite people who refused to talk. The guy said he had no idea and didn’t want to know that much about his other friends, as he was sure they wouldn’t tell him such things.

4th vaguest guy:

“I don’t think he’s happy either… I feel like if we just would talk more often things’ be better. Everyone needs someone to trust.”  This time the prince asked “Hum… Who are you talking about? You’re not allowed to say anyone directly?” The vaguest guy said “Oh right! Sorry!” He then got a little sad for some reason and added “Well at least I know someone else who isn’t happy, so it’s okay…”

The prince took all this information with him back to the 25 people on the island and managed to find a pattern: 9 of the definite people and 3 vague statements all talked about 4 other people.  This is how he worked out what was going on with them:

The prince talked to his mentor again who gave him a hint that there’s actually one more way to give information in this world, but only the bravest among us ever use it. The prince asked “What do you mean?” and his mentor said “There are some very specific statements which say absolutely nothing at all about someone, leaving everything from their personality to their existence completely open for interpretation.” He then told the prince 2 examples –

1st example: A man walks into a bar.

2nd example: Man bites dog – followed by “So try to find out if this last group of 4 people actually exists or not by asking questions like these”.

Conclusion:

The prince eventually found the 4 people who had been hiding from him. It turned out that one of them was indeed very happy, 2 of them weren’t so happy and 1 of them said he was pretty okay with how things were on the island (he didn’t really like talking about his happiness though).

One more thing: Two of those vague statements also had another quality which they shared with the definite people – who were amongst themselves unsure if their friends existed or not – something that separated all of these 10 people from everyone else on the island.