I woke to the sound of my alarm reminding me to put in the eye drops my doctor had prescribed. Out of habit, I covered my good eye to test the vision in the infected one. To my great alarm, my sight was very blurry, much worse than the previous day.

Memories of a painful hospital procedure the day before flooded back. What further tests and procedures would I have to undergo? How had something that had started so small get this bad?

I usually enjoyed the ride into town on my motor scooter, but that day my mind wasn’t on the beautiful scenery or the perfect weather. It had been a busy previous two months. One coworker and I had tried to keep up with every aspect of our volunteer work while the rest of our team was away, and now that they were back, instead of the rest I had hoped for, the workload had increased.

I really deserve a break, I thought, but there’s not much chance of that! Enveloped in a fog of self-pity, I never saw the speeding motorcycle until it crashed into me.

In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), Will Smith’s character makes the observation that the United States Declaration of Independence includes in its short list of “unalienable rights” the right to the pursuitof happiness—not the right to be happy, but the right to pursue happiness. Why, he questions, was it worded that way? His conclusion is that its author, Thomas Jefferson, must have understood that happiness is something that we all desire and strive for, but also something that not all will find or be able to hold onto.