Australians, all let us rejoice and pursue happiness

Spread the joy: we all want to be happy, right?

“If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!” Thus urges the nursery rhyme – and there are scores of renditions on YouTube, some sourced from Sesame Street. Curiously, the lyrics seem to derive from Latvia, while the tune closely resembles a song written for a Soviet film called Volga-Volga. Very few in the USSR were clapping with happiness at the time. It was 1938. And very few in Russia will be clapping their hands currently. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his mobilisation have not been happy decisions.

In any case Putin must know that happiness is a plot by the Americans. Its pursuit in their Constitution makes it both official and compulsory. At this time, when we’re reconsidering ours and have so many causes for unhappiness (pandemics, politics, the weather, etc), perhaps we should consider another borrowing from the US – like our foreign policies, our wars on drugs and much of our popular culture. Australians, all let us rejoice and pursue happiness.

Let me quote from the US original. Here’s how Thomas Jefferson made fun official, in the US Declaration of Independence. Drum roll, if you please. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that amongst these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That was difficult when weighted down with the chains of slavery – frequently used by the Founding Fathers to prevent their fully-owned humans from pursuing Liberty in any form. So much for being created equal, but it was a lovely sentiment.

And Americans, at least unchained ones, have always pursued happiness. They build Disneylands to monetise it (even more than happiness, the US sanctifies the pursuit of profit). Not that you need theme parks. Every shopping mall offers the joys and jubilations of shopping. And nothing makes an American happier than shopping.

Except drugs. Behold a paradox. Here the official injunction to pursue happiness collides with prohibition – once limited to booze but now covering almost every form of happiness induced by unofficial plants. Naughty poppies for example, and tsk-tsk marijuana – at least in those states where its use remains illegal. Pursuing this sort of happiness has historically led to a loss of liberty, particularly if you happen to be black.

You are, however, free to pursue happiness via guns. Of all sorts, big and little, up to and including ballistic missiles, although some restrictions apply regarding nuclear warheads. No prohibitions here. You’re at Liberty to lock and load. Indeed you’re encouraged to do so. If the NRA continues to get its way they’ll be compulsory. How else will the US maintain its much-admired lead in massacres?

Some pursue happiness in fast cars. Some in what is best described as the horizontal tango. (No mention of sex by the prim signatories of that solemn and sacred US document. But perhaps it was taken as read, another self-evident truth.) Many pursue it via gambling or gluttony or another of the deadly sins – or by defying the Commandments and coveting thy neighbour’s ass. Different strokes.

I prefer the pleasures of prose – both reading and writing it. It is a quiet way to pursue happiness and although one rarely actually catches it, the exercise is healthy and releases few greenhouse gases.

I’ll leave you now. Let you get on with it. Fearing that some of you will spend the arvo (if not the entire weekend) pursuing happiness via sport. Watching it, playing it or both. Have fun.