ESSAY:PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

	July 4, 2000
	Essayist Roger Rosenblatt offers his perspective on what makes Americans happy.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Leave it to Thomas Jefferson to start the country on its way by wishing it a mission seemingly impossible. Taking John Locke's triad of human rights-- life, liberty and property-- Jefferson changed the third item to "the pursuit of happiness"-- something that no other civilization-- monarchial, totalitarian or democratic-- would dare to set forth. The pursuit of happiness as a right. In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, author Andrew Delbanco wonders about that, noting wisely that, Jefferson's language aside, that right has never been self- evident. Before the 18th century enlightenment, happiness was consigned to the hereafter; one suffered on earth to be blissful in heaven. By the time America realized itself, happiness could be seen in good works; socially useful projects. In our own dot-com and NASDAQ times, happiness may have returned to Locke's property again. The pursuit of happiness: The pursuit of a second home, a convertible, a dream boat. On July 4, one might look into this idea. Did Jefferson design a country in which along with life and liberty came the right to pursue stock options, a Picasso at an auction, the lottery, one's own Lear Jet, a rented bungalow in the Hamptons for $350,000. How happy can one get? The question is not rhetorical. Not only does one fail to buy happiness by the acquisition of goods, one knows that one fails. ACTOR: I've got a man In London who buys all my clothes. ROGER ROSENBLATT: The splendid scene of the shirts in the "Great Gatsby. Robert Redford as Gatsby shows daisy his magnificent pile of shirts-- linen, silk, flannel, in pastel colors of faint orange and apple green. Daisy sobs out of control. Why? Because she's a little nitwit, to be sure, but also because she holds the American dream and the American heartbreak both in her hands. So are we, when asserting the right to pursue happiness, actually speaking about the pursuit of unhappiness? Delbanco strongly suggests this in his essay, and it's a tantalizing, if unnerving, thought. Sob if you will, the eternal round of getting and yearning fires the American engine. The state of not having gives us the frontier again. Ah, the Mississippi. Ah, the Rockies. Oh, pioneers. SPOKESPERSON: Three, two, one... ROGER ROSENBLATT: When we run out of real estate, we head for the moon, the planets, the stars. When we run out of those, we can always buy shirts, the getting of which throws us back like lightweight fabrics upon our eternally unsatisfied selves. "Heaven," Fred Astaire sang, "I'm in heaven." FRED ASTAIRE: (singing) I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek... ROGER ROSENBLATT: "I seem to find it, but I don't." The things we want that we can have always imply the things we cannot have. Is unhappiness really the goal? That would be strange, weirdly self-punishing. Of course happiness doesn't need to consist of stuff. One can have a lot of fun and sorrow as a material girl or boy. But there is also the less- alloyed happiness of family, of friends, of giving help to others, of the satisfaction of work. Pursue those things with impunity. Happiness, while never permanent, is nonetheless real. Here's a possible answer to the problem Jefferson gave us: Life and liberty allow us to pursue happiness any way we wish. If you want to pursue a pile of shirts, see where it gets you. If you want to pursue a good mate, children, neighbors, a decent job, a sense of community, the right to relieve the burdens of the poor, see where that gets you. The pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of the definition of happiness. And if that is what Jefferson was offering, it is as complex and challenging as a right can get. Now that you're free, America, what is it that you want? That is the question one asks every morning, every night, every July 4. (Fireworks exploding) I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

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