I just want to be happy. . . .

A phrase we all use - but one that likely has different meanings for each of us.

Can we think ourselves happy? If people think things are getting better, they can be happy in pretty tough circumstances - so, is happiness a state of mind we experience when we THINK things are getting better?

I know that I can be getting on OK in life, but if I don't perceive it to be 'going anywhere', I often won't feel very happy. I'll get bogged down in day-to-day routines and find myself looking around for anything that will give me a boost - alcohol, food, sex, exercise, some new 'self-help' fix, planning a trip. You get the picture. I bet you have your favorites, too. So is being happy just about the level of certain chemical elements in our brain? It's relatively easy to manufacture short term happiness, but its effects die out very soon - little more than a quick high.

Perhaps it's the PURSUIT of happiness that makes us happy. If that's the case, then setting goals toward things we THINK will make us happy - and setting new ones along the way - should keep us all in a state of perpetual happiness. That might render "the pursuit of happiness" even more profound that Thomas Jefferson realized when he wrote "happiness" instead of "property" in the Declaration of Independence. It could even explain the power of religion - with it's promises of eternal life, streets paved with gold, milk and honey, 70 virgins, paradise. . . . . and, of course, eternal happiness.