If Nero fiddled while Rome burned and President Hoover promised a "chicken in every pot and a car in every garage" at the height of the Great Depression and Neville Chamberlain proclaimed "We have peace for our time" as Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia, Americans today - in the teeth of a growing recession - are doing a great deal of fiddling and checking their pots, themselves. Sales of liquor, Starbucks and chocolate are breezing right along, unabated by hard times. It seems a part of the nature of the human animal to seek pleasures - small and large - when circumstances would suggest they should be more frugal or, at least, sacrifice superfluous pursuits for necessities. In brief, it is the supreme manifestation of mankind’s most mysterious and singularly unique gifts: the penchant for denial and ignoring the obvious.

I say unique to mankind because I see little suggestion of the behavior in the more enlightened of the earth’s inhabitants. For instance, the more evolved beasts walk away from a superior opponent (usually with nothing more than a few bruises and scratches) to fight another day. Man, on the other hand, is, with few if any exceptions, the only animal that fights to the death and routinely kills his opponent, whether it be for a woman, over drugs or simply because of stupid pride. Man will deny, to the end of his life, that he is being beaten in a fight and end his days believing he can win against all odds. This is denial at its tragic summit.

Recently highlighted by former Senator and two-time Presidential candidate John Edwards, the male of the species continues to believe (and repeatedly convinces himself of the legitimacy of his convictions) that he is the smartest animal on the planet. To wit: he knows he can get away with and hide forever his sordid forays into illicit sexual peccadilloes because he is clever and devious beyond compare. Of course he is completely wrong but he goes on in his delusions nevertheless. Even though it seems to be so, such denial is certainly not limited to men in power. Your intrepid (and completely delusional) author freely admits to having taken a cruise down this particular river when he was of the married persuasion. So, in a very real way, I am suggesting that anyone - male or female, rich or poor, powerful or one of the common mob - is prone to this sort of self-delusion. Why men continue to believe they are "too smart to ever get caught" is beyond the scope of this particular treatise. Which is to say, whole books have covered the many hypotheses of the psychology involved. That is to say, it can possibly be explained but cannot be remedied. Which is to admit, in brief, that I haven’t a clue other than the human animal is the master of deception - principally, deception of self. We, the ignoble Homo booboisie, are perpetual and irremediable buffoons of the worst sort.

Constantly amusing, often perplexing and thoroughly enigmatic is mankind. We roam our habitat, the majority of the time, completely befuddled and clueless. We think we know what we want but, when we claw and scratch and finally obtain it - whatever "it" may be - we cast our needful gaze immediately elsewhere. Another prize, another acquisition, another conquest. The whole time we tell ourselves "when I finally acquire _________, I will forever be content". And we never are. We are, among all the beasts of the earthly zoo, the only ones who are constantly in search of something with which to scratch our psychic "itch" and never seem to find the right abrasive. We are born, burped, stumble about for a miserable few decades and die with an never-ending, untreatable and constantly ticklish want.

If the Founding Fathers were right, it is "happiness" that we are in search of. But, one is forced to ask: Is happiness an endpoint? Do we reach a time in our lives when we achieve the ultimate, unsurpassable and penultimate state of happiness? Or, is the happiness we seek always just out of reach, like the carrot and the donkey, always dangling out of reach and always seducing us ever forward? When my first child was born, I would have sworn, at that instant, that I would never be any happier than when I first held the beautiful infant in my arms. When, four years later, I held my twin sons in my arms, I was convinced that was it. That was a feeling of bliss and joy that would never be surpassed, ever. When my divorce was finalized a decade ago, I was sure that happiness was no longer a distant longing but was something I would, finally, be able to secure and live, happily ever after. Shed of excess baggage, I was destined, surely, for perpetual bliss.

Surely and undeniably, an exquisite, palpable, unique form of the ephemeral "happiness" was attached to these events in my life. But, when the shine wore off and the memory became less acute, I took up my backpack and walking stick and set out again on life’s road in search of what must be out there somewhere: to wit, permanent happiness. And so it is with most of my species. And we seek it to this day.

The youth of today (maybe, the behavior strengthens with each successive generation) are particularly afflicted with the unending pursuit of the Holy Grail that is "permanent happiness" (is that an oxymoron?). They rush out to buy the latest cell phone, a new car, video game or console, MP3 player, or designer jeans fully convinced, I am sure, that once in their hands, they will be happy. I, as old fogies are prone to do, fear for the future (which is not to say the present) mental health of the next generation. They seem to be more feverish and fixated on the hunt for the Holy Grail and, when they don’t sense that they are reaching it, they become anxious and more reckless in the hunt. Today’s young people are almost universally tattooed, using drugs in fearsome variety and engaging in unprotected and unsafe sex habits. They seek ever more risky "sports" for the ultimate "rush" - base jumping, free rock climbing, etc. - under the illusion that the fleeting release of adrenalin and endorphins equates with "happiness". They risk more in their activities, their personal relationships and in their recreation and, by associating happiness with chemical changes in their body, are forever raising the bar for the rest of their lives when seeking man’s ultimate goal. What is a 70 year old former paraglider supposed to do for happiness?

Happiness, once known to previous generations as, simply enough, a beautiful sunset, an ocean cruise, a good cigar, a vintage wine or, at an even more fundamental level, enough food to eat and the absence of war, has today become much more complex and elusive. Our expectations have exceeded our grasp and, since they have, we remain confused, mislead, befuddled and depressive. Today, materialism is the single, overriding and, apparently, exclusive superhighway to happiness. But it is just an illusion. While Americans and, increasingly, the rest of the world, accelerate down this glittering autobahn, they are oblivious to the hard facts that it is a road without exits and has no end.

I begin to ramble and, for that, I apologize. But the situation is grown dire. Rooted in man’s greatest flaw - self-delusion - our frantic search for what we are convinced will make our life complete, i.e. happiness, overlooks the most important and universally neglected component for the chase that is life. In brief, introspection and self-examination. When do we ever stop in the nerve-racking chaos of our lives and ask the only relevant question: What, honestly, is it that will make us happy? It is both the most difficult and the most important question that man can pose to himself.

In order to answer it in a meaningful and truthful way, it is necessary to turn off that ever-churning, ever-mischievous, always delusional voice of our denial. It will not be easy as it has been the guiding voice for most of us from the minute we began thinking of ourselves as individuals, separate and distinct from home and parents. It has guided our dreams, our hopes and our choices - wrongly but unchallenged - all our lives. It is difficult to turn down the volume but, with practice, it can be done. And, when the false noise of self-delusion and denial are muted, there is another voice that can be heard, faintly at first but louder as time passes. This is a truer voice, an honest voice and a voice that will not deceive you. Ask it what will give you peace - not happiness - and you will undoubtedly be surprised by the answer you hear.

I will end by declaring that the materialism, the self-delusion and the endless pursuit of self-indulgent pleasure is not the path to true happiness, the kind of happiness that will last longer than a few minutes or a few days. Only when you can hear your deeper, quieter, truer voice will you come close to solving the riddle that plagues most to their grave, namely: What gives me peace, calm and a sense of purpose? Gentle reader, trust the words of an old man: when all is said and done, that is what the poets and the philosophers mean when they write the most misinterpreted and overused word in the English language: happiness.

And almost always what will fulfill your deep, personal longing doesn’t cost nearly as much as a new car or, even, a new iPod. What will cause you to take your foot off the accelerator in your bedraggled, frenzied and, ultimately fruitless search for the external whatever that promises lasting joy is not on sale in a store or waiting in a car lot or found at the top of a rock cliff. When you find the answer, it just might surprise you. Often enough, you already have it.

And, ultimately, that answer will be worth a million times all the material junk you now proudly call your own and which, in a year or two, will be broken, discarded or tossed into a Goodwill bin. Confucius might say (but he didn’t, I did) "everything outside self is fleeting". All that ultimately has worth is that which can bring you peace, inner calm and serenity of purpose. And that, though difficult to discern, exists within each of us and is, truly, a treasure hunt worth endeavoring.