Well... none. That is, none that detract from one's novel status as a contented creature. Much remains ordinary: speckled bananas that nobody wishes to eat, alarm clocks that ask too much too early, the same dreary vacancy where an overdue acknowledgement would be appreciated. But happiness is much like Howard Roark explained it: nothing hurts anymore. Life's pins and needles go down (or is it 'go in'?) to a certain point and no farther, unable to rob a freeman of that which transcends fear, pain, guilt, etc.

Although it's tempting to say that happiness is produced in concert -- i.e., a glow of romance or social intercourse -- I think the root of it taps a personal quest. For the man who wants nothing in particular is never satisfied, and the man who wants a preposterously selfish result is never satisfied with anything less. I have been both. I suspect that the arc of life implies both, because we begin as ignorant children, and it takes time to discern which pinnacle is personally mine to renounce as an impossible dream. Happiness, of course, is getting that which was forbidden forever and then suddenly, incredibly mine!

That unequivocal, emphatic predicate of ownership (mine!) is the root of all good, provided that it refers to something no one else can share, that no one else wanted or sought. One cannot own the White House, for instance. It belongs and belonged to many, surely hundreds of millions, living and dead. One cannot own a dog or a coin collection or a Led Zeppelin song, because other authors or lovers spoke first. Mother Nature made the dog. Jimmy Page made the music. Even the dullest and meanest love money.

Happiness is transformative, because it's unexpected. 'Struck on the road to Damacus' begins to state what no man can fully explain without metaphors. Happiness is a free bird in flight, an arrow without target, joy without end, an end in itself. Hegel's 'ground' and Rand's 'passion.' The alpha and omega. God in heaven.

Those funny old tarnished conceits point to the real meaning of happiness: an unalloyed experience of Yes to Me. How terribly self-absorbed! -- but it's a bit silly to guess otherwise. For happiness pertains only to self, means zippo sans the singularly possessive Mine.

I'm not speaking of love, which is the sacrifice we willing make for another, or duty, which opens the heart to dignity and bequeaths a kinder, safer world to those who follow (if they have enough courage and perspicacity to earn it). Happiness is neither shared nor teachable, can't be bought or sold on the market. It resides in one heart at a time and only for the time remaining. It may be fleeting indeed, if one has outlived his welcome. I think this is part of the formula, that happiness costs nothing and not less than everything. Add equal parts of honesty, daring, and randomness. Indeed, it's a crapshoot that feels like a trainwreck.

I mention this to put paid to all miscellany. Happiness is not mass-produced. It does not arise safely and securely, the cheery product of prudence. Your best interests, individual or collective, most certainly lay elsewhere in the lap of luxury, of certainty and shame. No happy man bows his head or knows what tomorrow may bring. Tomorrow is irrelevant. The old business of life goes on, but with a subtext that nothing can alter hereafter. Enemies have no power to steal it, however harrowing their threat of retribution.

For it has always been exactly so, that happiness is a rebuke of some sort, a whole selfishness that sees no other good except Mine.

-30-


Wolf DeVoon's Greatest Hits, Vol. II
Wolf DeVoon's Greatest Hits, Vol. I
Wolf at Laissez Faire City
The Freeman's Constitution
The Sexual Constitution