Americans think way too much about happiness, in my opinion. Surely, you’ve felt it, too—that overwhelming pressure to be happy all the time. If you’re not, there must be something wrong with you, at least according to commercial wisdom. You must be using an inadequate brand of toilet paper, eating unwholesome breakfast cereal, taking the wrong drug for your itchy skin, or otherwise missing out on the chance to be a perfectly satisfied human being.

When did happiness become something you buy rather than something you are?

I can’t say I’m a consistently happy person. I think my baseline runs more toward the darker side of the blues—cobalt rather than cornflower. I sigh a lot. I always see the risk before the reward, although maybe this is because I was trained as a lawyer, and that’s what a good lawyer is supposed to do. Or maybe it’s inherited; my mother’s smiles were few and far between.

More likely, it’s because I have bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, I’m much more intimately acquainted with the savage lows of depression than the........

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