Threads like this one are the reason I visit the Mudcat when I have what I think are better things to do.... I weighed in early on this one and here I go again. I would suggest that the usage of the word "happy" was indeed provocative, but a rather teeny-bopperish choice in my opinion. I cherish those moments when I am "happy" but I believe there are more highly-evolved emotions that one might attain. I'm "proud" of my parents and my daughters, I'm "grateful" for having been allowed to live through a few dangerous episodes in my life, I feel "satisfied" if I perform well at a gig, etc. I had a warm and stimulating childhood but always somehow believed that feeling "happiness" was a by-product of something else one was aiming for. This had to do with many influences, one of which was the prayer by Robert Louis Stevenson that my maw had framed and hanging on the wall. She read it to us at breakfast fairly often. Betcha Dylan knows it. R.L. Stevenson's writing is rich. Here is "Prayer at Morning." "The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep."

My favorite part is the "undishonoured." A legitimate double-negative for those who care about such things.

Frogmore