Happiness is a cauldron of fat beef

 

 A caldron of fat beef, and stoop of ale,

On the huzzaing mob shall more prevail,

Than if you give them, with the nicest art,

Ragousts of peacocks brains, or filbert tart.

 

-- William King, The Art of Cookery (London, 1708),  p. 107

 

Happiness is 1965's Hang on Sloopy by The McCoys with Rick Derringer

The true identity of the “Sloopy Girl” dancer was revealed in September 2021.

 

That would be clearance, Clarence

 

Happiness is Hodge, Samuel Johnson's cat

 

Who, by his master when caressed,

warmly his gratitude expressed,

and never failed his thanks to purr,

whene'er he stroked his sable furr.

-- Percival Stockdale, 1778

The comedy of maternal love is that its seismic intensity is expressed, most of the time, in totally mundane drudgery

 Elizabeth Bruenig for The Atlantic, here:

... My mother used to pick me up from day care in paisley dresses or broomstick skirts with slouchy boots, hair hot-rolled and blown out, with the lived-in scent of faded perfume: full glam for an eight-hour workday with a 45-minute commute on either end and then a second shift at home, cooking any number of demanding meals—fried chicken, smothered pork chops, breakfast for dinner with biscuits and gravy—and then helping me and my brother with our homework and loading up the dishwasher, all before she took her makeup off. I used to sit beside her and talk with her while she took her evening bath, watching while she rinsed her mascara off and finally breathed. ...

Happiness is Edelweiss 1965

 

 

Decades worth of research concludes that happiness is the good mood you get from social interaction

How Nearly a Century of Happiness Research Led to One Big Finding: Decades of wellness studies have identified a formula for happiness, but you won’t figure it out alone

Which is fine if you're an extrovert.

But in former times happiness at its root was simply thought of as good fortune, or as escaping misfortune and accidents, which seems to me a more inclusive definition.

25% of a given population, after all, is composed of introverts, who feel drained by social interaction, not enriched. But they are just as happy to have escaped being hit by a car as any one else.

The field of psychology still seems biased toward the extroverts.