My feeling is that Happy-ness is very heavily subjective as is our understanding of suffering.
You walk across a darkened room in your bare feet and you stub your toe on a misplaced item in your path. Your mind takes the original pain and amplifies it to the point of perhaps you sending mental blame to the person who had left the item rudely in your path. Perhaps a dialog happens in the mind where you tell that person how you feel about their unthoughtful action. Suffering is largely created in the head or at least amplified by thought. Pavlov's Dogs comes to mind.
For me it is not so much a question of are we happy but what thoughts are required for the dopamine release. One will be happy when...
- more money
- more fame
- more sex
- more more more
Happy-ness is amplified or minimalized by mind/ego in my opinion. The self (the thing we are suggesting feels this happy-ness) being an even greater illusion in my opinion.
It's definitely Lego. What asshole kid leaves Lego on the floor? Did they not know the vacuum cleaner cometh?
I was chatting about this with my son the other day. That groan up on waking about having to go to work, yet when you go, you find it enjoyable enough. We agreed the habit of either not vocalizing the annoyance or changing the thought is healthier. We believe our own shit sometimes and it changes the happy.