We put a lot of store by happiness - whether we know it or not, Liz Brezlin writes.
'If you're happy and you know it that's a sin.''
Bam. Just like that, Lisa Simpson sums up my entire Catholic childhood. Except it was more sort of Catho-Protestant.
If you're working hard, you're not working hard enough, and make sure you feel guilty about that, too.
Memories: incense and Hail Marys. The day I told my mum she deserved to be happy and she told me it's duty, not happy, that counts.
We put a lot of store by happiness, whether we are conscious of it or not. The unspoken narrative underneath a lot of what we consume is the other myth, the opposite view I also grew up with, watching white-teethed teenagers riding on bright yellow buses or calling goodnight to each other across the land of the free.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Could the American Declaration of Independence be any more at odds with an upbringing big on responsibilities? Or from the way things actually are? As usual, it's all in the interpretation. Context is everything.
Jefferson got the ubiquitous happiness phrase from Locke, who philosophised that ''the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty''.
Translation: you might imagine that a family-sized bag of chips/another glass of wine/chilling on the sofa is going to make you happy, but actually you'll find that an apple a day/a half-full glass of gratitude/an hour in the gale-force garden are more happy-making in the long term. And way more responsible and good for you.
I think it's the same rationale with the Hail Marys. In it for the long haul; enough said will surely pay dividends in the end.
The happiness Locke espouses is not churchy happy-clappyness. Rather I think it might come from Aristotle's Eudaimonism, which is a bit like a wellbeing/welfare kind of happy, but let's not go into it at too much length here just in case it gets all Sunday sermonising.
Suffice it to say that Eudaimonism, apart from sounding like a very cool modern religion just begging to be created, is at odds with the Brand Happiness of our times.
The not-so-subtle subtitle under everything we're sold. Buy this and you'll be happy. Buy more happiness when that one gets old! Buy two!
It's a pretty universal message and works with everything from whiteware to wives (except two wives at a time might be trouble). Variations include ''buy this and your children will be happy'', ''we've got a medication for that if your children aren't happy'' and ''buy this and you will look successful, which is sort of the same as being happy anyway''.
Although recent research, as explained by Action for Happiness, shows a kind of chicken-and-egg dynamic going on with happiness and success.
If you feel happier you are more likely to be productive and successful. And thus happier. Whereas if you start off chasing success, then happiness only comes as you reach success milestones and dips severely until your next defined success.
One of their backing-up statistics surveyed nuns at a convent. Those who wrote joyful things in their diaries lived, on average, 10 years longer than those who wrote negative stuff.
Which surely shows nothing at all, really, considering the amount of other factors to take into account. Or have I just shaved days off my existence by being unnecessarily negative?
And will the Hail Marys I say bring the balance back in my favour? And just how guilty should I feel about all of the above? And so what anyway, right?
Even if the world is split into those who do their duty and those who buy their happy, all the stories end the same.
You know how it goes ... and they all lived Happily Ever After.
• Liz Breslin
