The happiness industry is rotting, if only in my cranky little mid-life brain. What is all this endless caterwauling about happiness?

Why aren’t I, when will I be, how do I get — happy?

When did this become a thing to be pursued (yes, I know about the Declaration of Independence — I’m cranky, not clueless)? Why does everyone think they are owed buckets of happiness serum, why are they all telling me how to be happy and implying that I should be happy at all?!

The masses buy books about it, they read blogs and watch videos about it. I’m guilty, I’ve been sucked in by the silly, shiny promise of easy happiness.

Oh, you mean I can just ‘be happy’? Like, there’s a trick, a miracle, a whispering mantra to accomplish this nebulous abstract thing that will magic away all that is not ‘happiness’?

I say bullshit.

Shit from the bull, shit directly from the bull.

Did you know that there’s something called the ‘Happiness Index’? There’s actually a list of countries that are the happiest (the unhappy are at the bottom — surprise). Switzerland currently tops the list. There’s real science here — wealthy countries with friendly, functional governments are always happiest, whereas poor, war-torn, scandal-ridden countries fall nearer the unhappy mark. People get paid to tell us these things.

But — really?

What about that Swiss guy who broke his foot and dropped his cell in the dishwater? Or the Swiss miss whose manic Finnish boyfriend just took a dump in her living room (and her heart, for that matter)? They are not happy, in spite of their Swissness. Perhaps they were last week, perhaps they were ecstatic when the Happiness Index questionnaires were making the rounds, but they are so absolutely not happy now.

And, conversely, you cannot tell me that there isn’t happiness in India — lots and lots of it, I would wager — a country that came in at #117 this year on the Index. Perfect fleeting moments in ordinary days make people over-the-moon happy all the time, all over the world. That is my belief.

Isn’t happiness a thing sort of like the wind, blowing in and out at whim, breezy now, still now, a gale now? If humans pay attention — humans everywhere, in every situation — don’t we find fleeting moments of something we could call happiness?

I’ll not argue the fact that there are humans, everywhere, for whom happiness is elusive, unknown even. Humans who feel as if they live, and may well live, at the bottom of someone’s boot. Humans who suffer the injustices meted out daily by other humans, and that’s enough to make everyone unhappy, no matter where you are on the index.

But how can there be happiness without unhappiness? That would just feel like — tepid. Like dry toast. Mediocre, nothing. Not bad, not good.

How can we imagine that happiness is something to be quantified, qualified, measured? It’s so fleeting and makes little sense.

For instance, I live a life — an American life, #15 on the Index (you’d think we’d be higher, what with the pursuit of and all)— that outwardly shows no reason at all for unhappiness. I want for none of the basics, I have love, friends, relative health. Food, wine, song — it’s all here. And yet, I find ways to be unhappy. I feel unhappy sometimes and then I feel guilty about that, which makes me feel more unhappy.

And on the flip side, I have moments of perfect giddy happiness when there are things around me that might not seem happy-making. Miscellaneous pain, illness, money woes, struggling kid, mold — it’s a long list, you have one, too. But happiness will bubble up from this seeming cesspool of potential misery — unbidden, unexplained like a kind of madness.

There it is — OH, wait! — I feel happy!

How can such a crazy little unexpected gift be captured and analyzed? How can we be so arrogant as to assume that we have much control over, or understanding of, happiness?

Yes, we can get in touch with our perfect pure selves (good luck), we can practice gratitude (good idea), we can give and love and smile and sing and it may connect us to some current of happiness. But that can happen, to anyone anywhere — even in poor Togo, who currently has the unhappy distinction of the unhappiest country. There’s a happy guy in Togo, I’m willing to bet. Perhaps Togo needs a little help and I can’t imagine the announcement that they are happiness losers makes anyone feel any better.