Rewriting the famous old catchphrase, “Don’t Worry Be Happy”

The other day, I found a quaint little café named “Don’t Worry Be Happy” while visiting a new city to emcee for an international congress.

It was quite impossible for me to resist walking into this café that literally named itself after such a positive message (& uplifting song). But the more I think about this phrase, the more it feels like a non sequitur.

It’s an interesting saying. Is it suggesting that our worries will be irrelevant in the end? Maybe it’s blindly overlooking the complexities that life presents us — a bit too happy-go-lucky for my taste. Or perhaps it is acknowledging the troubles we face, yet suggesting we should be happy nevertheless because facing hardships need not imply we don’t deserve to be happy.

There is a line from The Good Place that struck a chord with me, written so intuitively and eloquently: “If there were an answer I could give you to how the universe works, it wouldn’t be special. It would just be machinery fulfilling its cosmic design. It would just be a big, dumb food processor. But since nothing seems to make sense, when you find something or someone that does, it’s euphoria.”

So the way I see it is that there’s a line missing in between.

If I may, I’d rewrite the phrase “don’t worry be happy” into something like this: “It’s only human to worry, so it’s okay, do worry, for that’s exactly what makes the state of being happy all the more sweet and precious, but don’t worry too much, because you WILL piece things together on your way :-)”

I want you, and I, to remember this.