“And they all lived happily ever after.”
The end. Bedtime. Pleasant dreams.
I remember the waves of drowsy contentment that final phrase would arouse in my spirit when I was very little. Even in elementary school, I could feel sparks of hopefulness jump in me – surely it was possible, at least – in the story! By secondary school I was worldly wise: “Only in fairy tales” could that happen. Without consciously making a decision, I turned my attention away from the possibility of happiness as a state of mind.
 True, there were moments in each week when I saw my parents acting like Snow White and her Prince Charming, but the rest of the week it was more like a soap opera that played out in front of my sister and me.
Of course there were/ are happy moments, events, circumstances, feelings; but enjoying a happy moment is not the same thing as “living happily ever after,” now, is it?
 I grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s; a time when TV offered realistic looking make believe: weekly shows like, “Leave It to Beaver,” “My Little Margie,” “Father Knows Best,” “Ozzie and Harriet” and “My Three Sons.” In their world, the family behaved like one of those lead-bottomed dolls that could be swatted and always returned to an upright position – which was, happy! The stories followed a donut formula: happy people who go through a mildly rough patch in the middle but are restored to their happiness by the end. And they had “laugh tracks” - the happy juice of American sitcoms.
It was the beginning of American popular culture’s enchantment with psychology as our rational religion, and psychotherapy as its liturgy. Marilyn Monroe starred in the movie, “The Seven Year Itch,” a lecherous, Freudian romp through a Madison Avenue advertising man’s libido as he flees to the waiting couch of a psychoanalyst to learn how to resist the powerful temptation to succumb to his unmarried neighbor’s considerable charms while the wife and kids have fled the summer heat of New York City for the nearby mountains.

In fact, American advertising has always been in the vanguard of society in applying the ever-increasing body of knowledge about dysfunctional human behavior to create or aggravate an anxiety or desire that could only be relieved by the purchase of their clients’ products or services.
 Happiness is always out there waiting for us to buy it. Why do you think we call it, “shopping therapy” when we take ourselves to the mall or our favorite littler shops or bookstores after a particular upsetting day?
Actually, we have become such compulsive consumers that we have substituted the experience of the reduction of our anxieties, depression and/or anger (our drive to find relief!) for the active pursuit of pleasure – that takes too much energy!
We don’t give much thought to the relevance of happiness. Our first priority is to manage our energy and find relief. But as we grapple with the growing body of information on how to improve the quality of our lives, we are beginning to reflect upon the implied or promised outcomes.
If I am unhappy because I am morbidly obese, for example, and I undergo gastric bypass surgery, I expect that when I’ve shrunk down to a size 10, 8 or 6 body I will be so happy everything will change. Then why are growing numbers of bariatric surgeons performing “recisions” - surgically reducing stretched out pouches of patients who are heading back into morbid obesity?
If I am bored out of my mind in my marriage and I choose divorce because I know I can “do better,” my next romantic relationship will be 180° opposite, right? Then we discover that, “All the good ones are taken!”
If I am miserable in my job, but the money’s decent and I can hang in there until early retirement – when I’ll really get to live my life. Tragic how so many American men die within the first 5 years of retirement!

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