“Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.” Victor Hugo 1802-1885, French poet, dramatist and novelist

The TV commercial jingle of several years back said ”happiness is different thing to different people, that what happiness is.” What is happiness? Happiness, according to the marketing and sales departments of the various agencies across corporate America, is to purchase their product. It is just that simple. No more no less. A radio soap opera from an era even further back was titled “The Right to Happiness.” Another soap titled “Our Gal Sunday” began on March 29, 1937 asked this question ” Can this girl from the little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?" It ran for twenty-two years to find the answer.

The Bible say: “To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 2:26.

So why aren’t we happy? Is it one of those elusive things that we can never find or attain? “Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.” said Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864, American novelist and short story writer. He also said “Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

Robert Heinlein 1907-1988, American science fiction writer said: “Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result. Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.”

K.