The Pursuit of Happiness, Part 1

I've been thinking a good bit about the pursuit of happiness in recent days. I'm not talking about the recent Will Smith movie here. I mean that phrase from the Declaration of Independence--as in, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
According to Jefferson, the pursuit of happiness is one of the rights bestowed on all of us by our Creator. That fact, he argued, was "self evident." Clearly, Jefferson did not mean that happiness was some sort of inalienable right for all people. If that's what he meant, then he would have said "life, liberty, and happiness." Instead, he mentions the "pursuit of happiness." As an analogy, I could note that the state of Missouri guarantees me the right to pursue largemouth bass. They don't guarantee that I'll catch anything when I put a line in the water, but I have every right to pursue them.
While I have some sense of how to pursue fish, I don't find it nearly so clear how to pursue happiness. In fact, I'd suggest that most people don't have a real clear notion of how to pursue happiness. In order to pursue happiness, we have to know pretty clearly what it is, and I don't believe that most people have that very well in mind. Over the next few posts, I'd like to explore this notion of what happiness is and how one goes about pursuing it.