As someone who has dedicated my life to studying happiness, I am often asked two related questions: What is happiness? And how do we pursue it? During this semiquincentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, those questions have taken on new urgency. Two hundred and fifty years ago, after all, Thomas Jefferson famously declared that we have the God-given right to “the pursuit of happiness.”
What did he mean? And what does this mean for us in 2026?
This column is named for the Declaration’s founding promise, so you’d hope that I would know something about exactly how to pursue happiness. The problem is that when this tricky phrase is followed as we often understand happiness today—a physical sensation to be obtained—it leads in the wrong direction. The more you pursue feelings of happiness, the less of it you will get.