Are you happy?

It must be the zeitgeist. Have you heard? It's all about being happy.

Popular magazines, academic research, and religious messages are full of descriptions and prescriptions about happiness. Just this morning, Slate referred its unwitting readers to a TIME magazine article informing us that "The Internet is a key to happiness." No kidding. Now I know. What I really want is to be happy AND that going online will make me happy, according to unbiased research by that well-known authority on my happiness, the Chartered Institute of IT.

Yoga Journal, for example, has always had lots of pretty pictures of pretty people (You want to be just like them, and if you do yoga, you'll be pretty too!) performing amazing postures while wearing big smiles and chic yoga attire. But lately the articles too, rather than providing information about, like, you know, yoga, are about that most amorphous of subjects, 'happiness'.

My Buddhist friends seem to be unanimous in the assumption that everyone - Buddhist or not - ultimately wants the same thing - to be happy. Not wise, enlightened, virtuous, or powerful, just happy. Apparently all other human goals, aspirations, and drives are subsumed in that one nebulous, undefinable word. People's behaviors, beliefs, and justifications for doing what they do vary widely, but it's a given that we all really want the same thing.

And there's the rub: if somebody says they want something else - let's say health, wealth, freedom, sex, drugs, rock and roll - that aberrant desire can be attributed to the notion that it's only a means toward what they really want, you know (the H word).

What's the purpose of living? To survive, mate, procreate, and raise children? No, it's to be happy. What's the goal of all successful people? To advance to greater responsibility in a productive career? No, you idiot, it's to be happy. What is it that everyone has in common? A genetic predisposition to communicate, use tools, build things, and maintain relationships? Hell no, those are just placeholders, substitutes, or sublimated outlets for the one true desire, let me guess, to be happy!

What's the ultimate measure of your educational growth, parental influence, work ethic, perseverance, social standing, and lovingkindness? Altogether now: Are you happy?

But I protest too much. I'm no different from anyone else. Of course I want to be happy. But I want a lot of other things too, and they're not reducible to any single unit of currency that conveniently fits under the sugary category of 'happiness'. Have we all seen too many B movies in which boy meets girl, a bunch of unpleasant conflict occurs, and after 100 minutes of mild predictable plot devices, they live happily ever after? Does anyone really want their life to reflect that formula?

If so, you stopped reading this rant six paragraphs ago. If you're jaded, faded, and overrated enough to have read this far, join me in beseeching the Universe. Please, let there be more to life than smiley-faced signs of everyone being nice to everyone all the time, lest they be found guilty of that most heinous of crimes, being unhappy for even a minute.

Some obscure sources say that it's possible to be a responsible, somewhat intelligent person and not be absolutely giddy with joy every waking moment. I have a number of valued acquaintances who actually frown quite often. From their behavior, body language, and conversation, I discern that they have things on their minds that concern them, perhaps worry them, make them wonder about things going on around them that might not be just hunky dory. What's wrong with these people?

In fact, at last count six out of six co-workers with whom I share a row of cubicles, could be described as borderline suspects of harboring less-than-happy thoughts. Every one of them is smart, funny, interesting, complex, witty, even erudite and highly skilled in their work, yet they seem to suffer that awful malady of occasional - and recurring - unhappiness. People say there's a cure, so maybe they should get a prescription.

Or maybe it's just me. They're all happy as clams, and I'm just not picking up on it. They recognized me early-on as the resident Knight of the Woeful Countenance, and they humor me by feigning deep existential concern for the dark undercurrent of horror in everyday life. Or not.

I have a confession to make. I'm not happy. I'm ecstatic.