Happiness in Time

Time magazine's cover story asks if we're having fun yet? And, why not?!

All human beings may come equipped with the pursuit-of-happiness impulse — the urge to find lusher land just over the hill, fatter buffalo in the next valley — but it’s Americans who have codified the idea, written it into the Declaration of Independence and made it a central mandate of the national character. American happiness would never be about savor-the-moment contentment. That way lay the reflective café culture of the Old World — fine for Europe, not for Jamestown. Our happiness would be bred, instead, of an almost adolescent restlessness, an itch to do the Next Big Thing. The terms of the deal the founders offered are not easy: there’s no guarantee that we’ll actually achieve happiness, but we can go after it in almost any way we choose. All by itself, that freedom ought to bring us joy, but the more cramped, distracted, maddeningly kinetic nature of the modern world has made it harder than ever. Somehow there must be a way to thread that needle, to reconcile the contradictions between our pioneer impulses and our contemporary selves...

The Happiness of Pursuit | TIME.com

(MORE: See Instagram images of joy from around the world and take our happiness poll here.)

Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/06/27/the-happiness-of-pursuit/#ixzz2XVjJrBAY

(READ:  Jon Meacham on what Thomas Jefferson meant by the pursuit of happiness)

Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/06/27/the-happiness-of-pursuit/#ixzz2XVjOXHwU