"Dumpster Diving is outdoor work - often rewarding and pleasant ... After having survived nearly ten years of government service, I find it refreshing to have work that rewards initiative and effort." Lars Eighner, of Austin, TX, scavenger and author of Travels with Lizbeth.

When I was 16, happiness was being liked by your friends, getting good grades, making your parents happy, being a good girl. Happiness has taken on a completely different flavor now." Patty St. James Roberts, divinity student from Webster Groves, MO.

"I know I am supposed to move on in pursuit of my dreams, but it just doesn't feel right." Thomas, ninth-grade student at New York's JHS 22.

"The pursuit of happiness has been reduced to the pursuit of pleasure... The more we get involved, in giving ... to others, the more we will connect with the fountain of joy in our lives." Arianna Huffington, author and social reformer, Montecito, CA.

"I say no, no one can take my happiness away from me, no one in this country will put their foot on me. I am Rosa Martha, and no one will take away what I am." Rosa Martha Zarate Macias, a social worker in San Bernadino, CA.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, is the third and final program in DECLARATIONS: ESSAYS ON AMERICAN IDEALS, the debut public affairs series from the Independent Television Service.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS presents five distinct views of our inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. No two individuals share the same idea of happiness, as demonstrated in five moving essays by those quoted above, created in collaboration with five independent producers from around the country. For some, happiness is a thing achieved through spirituality, faith, perseverance, or helping those in need. For others, it is only a dream clouded by hopelessness.

Pop icon Timothy Leary and individuals interviewed on the street add to the mix of ideas. Leary, in "soapbox" commentaries," provides relief to the emotional essays. "I think that aging is a -- can be -- a very happiness-inspiring period," Leary declares. "I think that senility has been given a bad name by old people... As I get older I don't worry so much about some of the small things. I don't give a damn. Of course, short-term memory loss is almost like being stoned."

Program essays, essayists and independent producers are:

Reflections on Dumpster Diving- independent producer David Van Taylor, scavenger/writer Lars Eighner and his dog Lizbeth go dumpster diving in Austin, TX. Through his experience finding food, clothing and shelter in dumpsters, Eighner sees scavenging as rewarding work and a "modern form of self reliance" that has taught him deep lessons. He explains: "The most important lessons to be learned are to distinguish between what to take and what to leave; to recognize that a thing I cannot use or make useful, perhaps by trading, may have no value however fine or rare it may be."

Journey Home - Independent producer Arthur Barron and baby boomer Patty St. James Roberts revisit the American dream in a St. Louis suburb 27 years after Barron's filming of Sixteen in Webster Groves, originally broadcast on CBS and in which St. James Roberts was featured. She grew up in the upper middle-class Webster Groves, Missouri, in the 1960s. Now a divinity student, wife and mother, Patty St. James Roberts, looks back to 1966 when she was 16, and reflects on her expectations then and now. Over the years, her idea of happiness has dramatically changed.

Young Playwrights - Independent producer Nigel Noble, drama teacher Arthur T. Wilson and ninth-grade students from New York City's Lower East Side School JHS 22, create a play about alienation from the American dream. Eight students attend a play writing course Wilson teaches at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. In class, they free associate on the term happiness, dreaming of money, girls, boys, marriage, family, flowers, a smile, as well as drugs, loneliness, yearning for home. Improvising, their free association develops into a short screenplay about drug use, family confrontations, grief over the death of a parent. The Hispanic and African-American teenagers describe lives filled with sadness, loneliness and loss; their daily pursuits focus on attempts to revive hope.

The Spiritual Deficit and the American Dream - Independent producer Marco Williams follows author and lecturer Arianna Huffington throughout Los Angeles as she redefines the pursuit of happiness as a spiritual journey. Huffington asks: "Are we happy? We must be. After all, we're Americans. It's in our blood ... Happiness is as American as apple pie ... Yet still we are not happy ..." She believes that we must redefine the pursuit of happiness as the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment through altruism, and philanthropy - "in loving rather than in being loved, in creating rather than consuming, in giving rather than in getting."

Dichosa Mujer - Independent producer Christine Burrill witnesses Rosa Martha Zarate Macias bringing happiness to others through her work, songwriting and singing in the barrios and fields of San Bernadino, California. For Rosa Martha Zarate Macias, a former nun turned troubadour, happiness is found in helping others. From her prosperous family in Cuernavaca, Mexico, to the confines of a convent in Southern California, to the barrios, she has found happiness in her "work against oppression, exploitation, and racism" as a singer-songwriter, grassroots labor organizer and social worker.