It is used in modern society in many contexts: police, literary, trivial, occupational. But today's context of choice is the pursuit of happiness. The Happy Guy has a lot of opinions about being happy, including quotes from a lot of famous people. Happy is just not easy to define.
It is easy to be happy for an instant and then be not happy. It even easier to be happy with anticipation of being happy in the future, but then not be happy when the future arrives. Most of us like to believe that we want to be happy. But, most of us also don't really know how to.
A founding principle of the US of A is the self-evident truth "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We are not guaranteed happiness, but we are in America guaranteed the right to pursue it.
For me, happiness and the pursuit of it are not only intertwined, but are often the unintentional result of trying each day to love God and my neighbor as myself. But, this is so hard to do! Happiness is pursued and found in unexpected places and the harder I try to find it, the more it eludes me. There is no list of things to acquire or to do which would result in happiness from now on.
There are days when I am not happy. My family, my friends, my neighbors don't always behave as I wish they did. Sometimes I get sick or injured or just don't feel any passion for the day. But, I am trying to learn to respond to the events of each day and not to react. By pursuing response and not reaction, I sometimes find myself happy without even knowing how I got there.
So, I must remind myself each day to choose to be happy, to be thankful for the many opportunities with which I can pursue happiness, and to recognize that fortune has not let me go free.
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