In William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, there’s a passage where the Eastern European immigrant owner of a grocery store is hectored by his young son for a variety of treats. The kid asks for an apple, an orange, a banana, a candy bar—quite a bounty considering this is taking place in the thick of WWII. Then, finding them all wanting, the child abandons the goodies, half-eaten. Exasperated by his son’s capriciousness—and the kid’s assumption of a random customer’s demand for not-in-stock, raisin-filled cookies (W.C. Fields, had he been more yiddishe, could’ve inserted this whole bit into It’s a Gift)—the grocer breaks down, begging the child to find satisfaction in the good things life has given him. Saroyan leaves ambiguous whether the entreaties have any effect on the child, and we can only hope that the desperate customer—on a mission for his own, sick kid—eventually finds another resource for those hallowed raisin cookies.

We’re all looking for the secret key to happiness, the one, true thing that will end our wanting. I suspect that few of us know exactly what that one thing would be—we have inklings, vague notions, but no clear vision. Part of that may be self-preservation—if we ever attained that goal, what need would there be to carry on? Part of it might be pure common sense, an understanding that the One True Thing doesn’t really exist, that it’s best that the goal be kept ill-defined and ever out-of-reach, so we have a reason to get out of bed every day.

[But some people don’t know what’s good for ’em.]