America was founded on three ideals: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There have been debates over what life takes priority over what life and over when one man's liberty is another man's slavery in recent years. However, both these debates pale in comparison to the fact that, from the start, there has been no consensus on exactly what "happiness" was. Is it joy? Euphoria? An enjoyable job? Success in business? Or one of a myriad of other things? In the 1960s, one insurance company tried to convince customers that it was the path to happiness by inventing the "smiley face." The smiley face was a simple yellow circle with two dot eyes and a broad, closed smile across the bottom. This face was the very picture of euphoria... in its time. Eventually, in our quest for ever more happiness, the smiley face began to look "cheezy." The eyes weren't smiling with the mouth, the mouth itself wasn't open. The poor smiley face became so outdated, it became an icon for light-heartedness or even kidding rather than true euphoria. But the smiley face had done its job. "Happiness" now meant euphoria to most Americans. And out of our founding spirit, we wanted ever more of it, even in exchange for life and liberty. This created shorter attention spans, as we needed to keep engaged all the time. Calm wasn't sufficient. No, we needed excitement. We needed speed. And we needed a new smiley face. And in 2007, that's what we got. The awesome face (pictured in the thumbnail) spread from an obscure Pokémon forum to Something Awful, and from there all over the internet. When exactly it was created originally for the original site is now lost to the mists of time, but it was only in 2007 that it became popular. It was a genuine portrait of euphoria: living eyes and open, toothless grin. But the very liveliness of the awesome face, contrasted with the banality of the original smiley face, makes me worry: Are we on an endless upward spiral of awesomeness, excitement, high speed and energy? Because if we are, we are bound to come crashing back down soon enough. And that crash will destroy happiness, not just euphoria but all the other kinds of happiness, in America.