Students in pursuit of 'Happiness' now

The woman, a neat and poised gray-haired senior, is answering a simple question: Are you happy?

Posed by a trio of teenage girls from far north suburban Grayslake, the woman explains that her husband's death has pushed happiness to the back burner -- for now. "Prior to that, yes,'' she says of happiness. "And I will be again.''

The teens' project is a redo of sorts of a documentary made 41 years ago in Chicago by Kartemquin Films, best known for the 1998 basketball study "Hoop Dreams." In 1968, Kartemquin's Gerald Temaner and Gordon Quinn took to the streets with a pair of young religious sisters to make "Inquiring Nuns,'' an exploration of happiness in those tumultuous times.

Back then, no one mentioned "gratitude journals.'' People spoke of Vietnam and racial unrest and cultural revolution. Said one hippie-ish girl back then, "Maybe people aren't ready for it but they better get ready for it. The world is changing and, man, you can't lag behind."

After reading in the Sun-Times last March about a 40th anniversary screening of "Inquiring Nuns" at the Chicago History Museum, Scott Swisher, a Grayslake Central High School social studies teacher, proposed to his students a re-creation of the documentary. They would return to some of those same Chicago places -- in the Loop, outside a Hyde Park grocery, at a black parish in Chatham and at area museums -- and take the temperature of happiness in the 21st century.

For many people in 2008, contentment was as close to happiness as they could get.

In 1968, happiness seemed to be a state that was interrupted by moments of unhappiness. In 2008, when the high school students posed their question, happiness seemed to be a fleeting feeling that provided relief from the humdrum, the Grayslake students said.

"I think a lot of people say they're happy when they're just feeling OK,'' says a young woman filmed last year outside a Hyde Park market in "Happiness -- Forty Years Later." "You can't be happy all the time.''

"I'm certainly content,'' said another young man, sitting on the steps of the Art Institute. "You want to see happiness? This is happiness right here: A chocolate chip cookie -- you break in half and share it."

His friend offers, "I think we live in a society where we strive for an illusion of happiness which doesn't actually exist.''

Gordon Quinn, one of the original makers of "Inquiring Nuns," recently viewed the new version at Grayslake Central and was struck by how so few people in 2008 mentioned the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (compared to the Vietnam preoccupation 40 years ago) and how many of those interviewed last year had difficulty expressing themselves.

Of the war, Quinn suspects that the all-volunteer military has distanced many Americans from the realities of military service compared to 1968's draft which, potentially, could put all young men in harm's way. "People were more connected to Vietnam,'' he said in an interview.

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