I find it astonishing that Thomas Jefferson placed happiness alongside liberty and life itself in the Declaration of Independence. While we don't know for sure why Jefferson included happiness in the document, Darrin McMahon discovered “that formulations linking happiness, life, liberty and property” appeared in a number of colonial constitutions. Thus, interest in happiness seems to have been “in the wind” at the time of America's birth. McMahon also noted that while the delegates to the Continental Congress “scrutinized” every line of Jefferson's draft, “cutting and slashing,” not a single one recorded reservations about the “pursuit of happiness.” Everyone agrees that happiness is good, but should it be up there with life and liberty, and made so prominent in the founding document of the United States?

Psychologist Jonathan Freedman wrote that when one of his interviewers tried to talk about happiness to people in groups, they joked and gave it no real importance. However, “when she interviewed them alone, the topic became too serious and emotional and people stopped talking.” Perhaps Jefferson's idea of happiness is the serious kind, the kind that people have difficulty talking about. In this chapter, we will try to understand Jefferson's view by looking at some of the alternative meanings of happiness.