William M. Macfadyen

There are dinners you attend, and there are dinners you participate in. A crawfish boil is firmly the latter. Nobody has ever eaten crawfish gracefully, and that is precisely the point. From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, the rooftop of the Kimpton Canary Hotel in downtown Santa Barbara will host one of these gloriously ungraceful evenings, and I have every intention of being there with my sleeves rolled up and my dignity checked at the elevator.

As America celebrates its 250th birthday this Independence Day, it’s worth reflecting on what really makes our country exceptional. Yes, we should celebrate our remarkable history and the enduring promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But the framers understood that government exists to create the conditions for liberty, not to live our lives for us. The Constitution’s preamble speaks of forming “a more perfect Union” — not a perfect one.

(The Belonging Co video) We’re looking for true happiness in all the wrong places. Thomas Jefferson drafted the famous sentence, which states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So why, even though it’s in our Declaration of Independence, is happiness so often like a desert mirage — maddeningly elusive?