Cynical view of happiness.

[bennyboy]

I'm talking about the naive perception that being happy is a choice.  When you've experienced an inability to be happy in life in spite of your great to desire to be and have exhausted every means you can think of to no avail, only then will you realize it isn't a choice.  When everything is going fine it is easy to be fooled

There's certainly some truth to this.  However, much of the unhappiness people feel is self-inflicted.  I don't know if you can choose to be happy, other than making a choice to take drugs.  But it's certainly possible for most people to remove many of the self-imposed impediments to their happiness: unreasonable expectations, poor health due to drinking or other unhealthy lifestyle choices, the refusal to feel happy until I've achieved arbitrary goal "X."

Now, if someone is in severe emotional, mental or physical pain, happiness is probably going to be very difficult to achieve.  That's a completely different story.