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Listen carefully for the sound of spontaneous laughter in America's public places. In other words, Jefferson's wistful aspiration has gradually transmuted into first an entitlement and eventually an obligation, even as its actual practice has become increasingly rare. To have someone tell them they should just stop trying felt like a threat to an oath they'd taken. Why?īecause nearly everyone in this country feels the weird, invisible pressure to pursue happiness they feel that secret shame of not trying hard enough to attain it. Whether hippie, cowboy, redneck, or debutante, practically everyone who read it thought there was something threateningly wrong with it.
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Seek to define your mission and pursue that."ĭespite the safely Puritan kicker, this homily pissed off the broadest range of folks you can imagine. 15, which stated: "Avoid the pursuit of happiness.
#The pursuit of happiness song list Patch#
So I spent the night before my 30th birthday composing a list called "Principles of Adult Behavior." Most of my self-directed advice consisted of such platitudes as Polonius liked to lay on Hamlet-stuff like "Expand your sense of the possible" and "Tolerate ambiguity."īut there was a patch in the middle of this earnest document that nearly every American who read it bottomed out on. But since I was about to become an adult, I figured I ought to take a stab at graceful adulthood. I really didn't trust anyone over 30, and remain reluctant to do so even now. Like many of my generation, I hadn't expected to live to such an age. Not until I turned 30 did it become apparent that my wariness of the pursuit of happiness might be a subtle form of treason. They are not pursuing happiness they are fleeing suicide. Rather, they murmur with listless gratitude that antidepressants have pulled them back from the Abyss. I have never heard any of my friends and acquaintances who have become citizens of the Prozac Nation claim that these drugs bring them any closer to actual happiness. Better living through chemistry? I don't think so. It produces a monstrous, insatiable hunger inside our national psyche that encourages us to ravenously devour the resources of this small planet, crushing liberties, snuffing lives, feeling ourselves ordained by God and Jefferson to do whatever is necessary to make us happy.ĭuring the year 2000, while feeding at the greatest economic pig trough the world has ever slopped forth, Americans ate $10.2 billion worth of Prozac and other antidepressants (up 19.5% from the previous year). Indeed, the pursuit is a poison that sickens our culture.
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Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.Įxtolling the pursuit of happiness was a toxic stupidity entirely unworthy of my greatest American hero, Thomas Jefferson.