Wow. See, this is the kind of thing we NEED in the forum.

There is too much in your post for me to respond to it all. Rather than respond, I feel inspired to expound a bit on the issue of happiness.

Much care must be taken to understand someone like Vandal A, because it is not easy. I think Vandal A knows right from wrong but is so used to sacrificing what is right with what is comfortable that he is in denial about what kind of behavior is ok and what is not. But not caring about right from wrong does not make one immune to the consequences. And I'm not talking about retribution from the store, either. (Although if I were the manager of that store, the story would be decidedly different.) Even had the manager upheld your direction and made Vandal A pay for the damaged notebook, all this would accomplish would be to make Vandal A angrier at the world and, perhaps, therefore feel more justified in slighting it. The real consequences, unavoidable, will gnaw at him on the inside. If he wisens up, he'll realize what's happening and seek to make amends. If not, he may never realize what he's doing to himself, but he'll carry the weight of the burden nonetheless. Small, mean people do not lead contented lives.

As for yourself, by acknowledging that your personal conduct should be constrained by what is right, you are already farther along.

But here's an interesting question. Is happiness really the goal one should be seeking in life? I don't think happiness is bad, and I don't think it's bad to seek it, unless one seeks it above other things that are as or more important. But I do think there are things that are as or more important. Happiness is comfortable, but what does it profit us? It's not entirely useless -- we gain sanity from it, a reprieve which allows us to gain perspective. But it is with suffering that we learn. Without discontentment, what have motivated you to write that post? Writing that post did you good, and unusually conspicuous good at that: why, you were discovering things about yourself and the world around you even as you wrote, and you said so yourself as you were composing.

My message to you would certainly not be "yeah, you're unhappy -- like it!" Pursuit of happiness, again, is not something I think to be bad. But if you are discontented with your life, it's not necessarily a bad thing, because such times may be used as opportunities to learn and grow.

S "'Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.' -- Eccl. 7:3" am