The Obligation to be Happy
By Linda Pastan

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.
Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

I like how Pastan says that people expect happiness from her "casually". I think this is true of most people. Since a main goal in life is the pursuit of happiness, people who are unhappy are generally considered unfulfilled, instead of accepted for who they are. Pastan talks about her faux happiness and how the strives to put on a good show for the people surrounding her. Instead, her "fedality to sadness" keeps her from being what people assume everyone should be. Her reference to Midas, or a god who would turn everything he touched to gold, signifys how she is expected to be perfect. She assumes that Midas himself had hardships in his life too, but common knowledge is that he was perfection.