"If You're Happy and You Know It...."

“If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.” Remember that song; remember those days?  You’d sing it with your child, usually in a circle with other kids and mothers; and there you’d all be…so happy, and you knew it.

Maybe it’s me, but these kinds of shortcuts to personal satisfaction aren’t what they used to be. Recently I’ve been inundated with Facebook tests to determine the color, city, nickname, and dog that make me most happy.   However their conclusions, respectively: green, London, Cutie, and whippet, prove that I’ve gotten it all wrong.  All along, I’ve thought of myself as a poodle-loving Francophile [who would never be called “Cutie”] happily surrounded by the powerful SRQ blue of sky and sea.  Apparently, I’m not happy… and I don’t know it.

One recent survey I took made it abundantly clear that I don’t even live in the house most suited to my true nature.  It revealed that I should not be in a Florida home, built in the “Faux Mediterranean-No-No” style I favor, a hodgepodge pile of wrought iron features, colorful stucco, and bougainvillea festooned loggias. Rather, this survey concludes that my destiny is a post-modern structure perched on a hilltop overlooking Crete. But didn’t that other test say I’d be happiest in London? And, would someone called “Cutie” live in a post-modern house anyway?

Until I started taking these surveys, I thought my SRQ life was pretty good. So what if a bunch of questionnaires reveals that every decision I’ve ever made is wrong?  How can so wrong feel so right? [And I’m not a country song lyricist.]

Why even bother to try and understand? After all, this morning’s survey revealed that I’m actually a unicorn.  And from what I’ve gathered from reliable sources, Sarasota unicorns are very happy, whether they know it or not.