HAPPINESS, THE SEQUEL: Given my last post with the hideous happy face, thought it would be good time to trot out a pretty funny NYT Magazine article from July: "Happiness: A User's Manual." It offers the latest information on who's happy, who isn't, and why. The good news: "Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than members of other professions." The strange but predictable bit:
On a day-to-day basis, caring for children creates roughly the same level of satisfaction as washing the dishes. In fact, surveys of parents invariably find a clear dip in happiness after the Blessed Miracle of Childbirth, which continues unabated for twenty years -- bottoming out during adolescence -- and only returns to pre-birth levels when the child finally leaves home.
Well, that explains the European demographic implosion. If I may speak on behalf of the rest of the human race -- those of us who keep on breeding, misery and all -- I would say the surveys are, as they say, objectively true but subjectively false. Wretched parenting situations occur with appalling frequency, but they aren't necessarily experienced as such. Personally, I could have done without the Blessed Miracle of Childbirth, in which I participated in a fifth-wheel "coaching" capacity -- I believe future technology will make it possible for babies to hatch in the microwave. But watching the kids grow up has been a wild, strange adventure, better than any movie -- and well worth the exorbitant price of admission.
9:01:07 PM 
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