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O N T HE H UN T F O R HAP PI N ES S How many of us are really sure what ‘happy’ is, and will we even know when we’ve found it?
I
t is a fact that people always find happiness in fairy tales because, at the end, ‘They all live happily ever after.’ But how many of us really believe that Beauty never had the tiniest argument with the Beast after they were married; or that Cinderella never had toothache, or period pains, or PMT, after she married Prince Charming; or that no-one they loved ever got angry or fell sick. Yet we are told, quite clearly, that they all lived happily ever after. So, perhaps they had a different idea of happiness back then. Or perhaps they felt that being alright most of the time was enough to justify the epithet ‘happy’. Or maybe there is more than one kind of happiness?
If you look in the thesaurus, that would appear to be true. There are innumerable words that mean ‘happy’: beaming, blissful, buoyant, carefree, cheerful, cheery, chirpy, chuffed, contented, delighted, ecstatic, elated, enraptured, euphoric, exhilarated, exuberant, flourishing, glad, glowing, goodhumoured, gratified, grinning, high-spirited, in a good mood, joking, jolly, joyful, lighthearted, merry, over the moon, overjoyed, pleased, radiant, rapturous, satisfied, smiling, sunny, thrilled, untroubled—are just a few of them. Some of them are short-lived and quite extreme emotions; others are longerterm, gentler feelings. But which is the one people are looking for?
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