If you want to be happy for the rest of your life ...

[caption id="attachment_644" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="This exit for Happy"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Texas-stuff-197.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-644" title="Texas stuff 197" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Texas-stuff-197-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

... you just have to get off the interstate.

I played golf in Utopia this summer, relaxed for a few minutes in Eden and drove right through Happy on the way to Tucumcari, N.M.

If you know the geography, or maybe if you just saw the fairly obscure <a title="Happy, Texas" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162360/" target="_self">movie</a>, you probably realize that I'm talking about towns in Texas, none of them really big enough to qualify as cities. Indeed, in Utopia I actually saw a cow walking -- do cows walk? -- down the main drag.

What surprised me the most about Texas, what surprised me the most about Georgia when my wife and I visited there twice this spring to buy the house to which we'll retire in another four weeks, is that both places really seemed to give the lie to an old expression I had always believed.

<em>"People are pretty much the same all over."</em>

The thing is, they're not.

I'm convinced that for the most part, people who don't live in the "great cities" are, well, they're nicer. They might have a bit of a complex about how they're viewed by the so-called "important" people, but in general they're nicer to their neighbors and more tolerant of differences than you might expect.

I grew up in one of the great cities in the world -- the suburbs of Washington, D.C. -- and I have spent the last 20 years living in another of the world's premier cities. I never imagined that I would come to love rural Texas as much as I did, or that I would find myself so totally thrilled with living in the Georgia countryside.

I guess Happy -- or happiness -- is wherever you find it.

You just have to keep your eyes open.