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We chase after it, when it is waiting all about us. “Are you happy?” I asked my brother, Lan, one day. “Yes. No. It depends what you mean,” he said. “Then tell me,” I said, “when was the last time you think you were happy?” “April 1967,” he said. It served me right for putting a serious question to someone who has joked his way through life. But Lan’s answer reminded me that when we think about .... happiness, we usually think of something extraordinary, a pinnacle of sheer delight---and those pinnacles seem to get rarer the older we get. For a child, happiness has a magical quality. I remember making hide-outs in newly cut hay, playing cops and robbers in the woods, getting a speaking part in the school play. Of course, kids also experience lows, but their delight at such peaks of pleasure as winning a race or getting a new bike is unreserved. In the teenage years .... the concept of happiness changes. Suddenly it’s conditional on such things as excitement, love, popularity and whether that zit will clear up before prom night. I can still feel the agony of not being invited to a party that almost everyone else was going to. But I also recall the ecstasy of being plucked from obscurity at another event to dance with a John Travolta look-alike. In adulthood the things that bring profound joy---birth, love, marriage---also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. Love may not last, * isn’t always good, loved ones die. For adults .... | 
