Happiness tax

"Happiness tax" is an expression I always use with my family when things get rough. In an early 1960s Italian-produced film, titled Ashor, the Left-Handed, starring Gordon Scott, Scott burns his right hand deliberataly, telling the gods that that was his something like "happiness tax" so that the gods would let go of him to live his life free from troubles. The Chorus at the close of Euripedes' Alcestis chants, "Only to be safe from the envy of the gods, is enough happiness." Man is so great and important that he is enviable by the gods themselves, "the beauty of nature, the paragon of creatures", say Hamlet about man. Oscar Wilde says that man is so important that God created for him the universe which consists of billions of planets, stars, galaxies and whatnot