All of us are looking for some magic panacea that will bring happiness. Advertisements, travel brochures, even social movements promise us that this happiness is just around the corner, if only we would buy, try, go, see, join, involve. The pursuit of happiness is not only part of our American way of life, it is our constitutional, God given right.
So, we strive harder, we look everywhere for happiness in our marriages, in our careers, in our children, in ourselves. We sometimes feel we are close to reaching temporary goals that we thought would make us happy, but never feel we’ve quite found or permanently captured it. In a sense we are all very much like a baby who at six months can sit but is frustrated because she can’t stand; at nine months is frustrated because, although she can stand up, she can’t bend her knees to get back down; and at one year, having mastered both sitting down and standing up, is frustrated because she can’t walk.