33rd Annual Great American Think-Off
Congratulations to all four finalists!
Read the winning essays below
The four finalists for the 2026 Great American Think-Off were (in alphabetical order): Julie Iverson, a self-employed ideator from Minneapolis, MN; Lorie Kolak, a stay-at-home mother and award-winning writer from Riverside, IL; Thaddeus McCamant, a longtime agriculture educator and consultant residing in Frazee, MN; and Allen Taylor, a truck driver from Colorado Springs, CO.
At the 33rd annual Think-Off debate held in New York Mills, MN, on Saturday, June 13, 2026, Allen Taylor successfully argued that the pursuit of happiness has NOT made Americans unhappy, winning the gold medal and the title of America's Greatest Thinker for 2026. Taylor defeated Julie Iverson in the final round of debate, and Iverson went home with the silver medal. Lorie Kolak and Thaddeus McCamant both earned bronze medals. Each of the four finalists also won a $500 prize and an all-expense-paid weekend in New York Mills.
Read the 2026 Think-Off Finalists' award-winning essays below!
Allen Taylor | Colorado Springs, CO
Gold Medal Winner | America's Greatest Thinker
The pursuit of happiness has NOT made Americans unhappy.
Let me tell you about my job.
My pay is variable. I’m exposed to the elements, bust knuckles and can go days without a shower. I don’t see my family for nearly a week. I live in a room the size of an elevator.
I have to do math.
I have the seventh most dangerous career in the world, with hours of tedium and moments of terror. Everything I do is scrutinized by people who don’t understand anything about my responsibility. Minor errors answer to law enforcement and the federal government. Mistakes can kill.
I’m ignored by half the world and disrespected by the rest. I work 70 hours every 5 days and repeat it the next week. It’s lonely. You’d think I’d be desperately unhappy, and in fact most people who try my job quit in a matter of months.
I’m a trucker – and that IS the greatest job in the world. I’ll tell you why.
When the concept of the “Pursuit of Happiness” was put to paper in 1776, it wasn’t a demand for a result. The right to a thing doesn’t imply the thing must be granted! Instead, it promises that one has the legal authority to claim it. You have the right to life, liberty and property; but no one is required to give it to you. However, if you choose to assume responsibility and risk, no one can stop you.
Words mean things; we cannot simply change the dictionary to make our point. People often define a complex concept by trying to define the opposite – but the opposite of war is not peace. The opposite of poverty is not wealth, and the opposite of happiness is not unhappiness. Happiness is its own definition - a state of mind – which others aren’t required to grant.
Alternately, happiness is occasionally defined as a blend of concepts – satisfaction, success, contentment, fulfillment, esteem; but those concepts require a whole new set of variable definitions. If you want to have fun at a cocktail party filled with psychologists, throw Maslow’s concept of Self-Actualization into the room and watch it explode. Even when discussing the pinnacle of human existence, we only define happiness by what it means to us.
Paradoxically, we live in a world that measures happiness by defining what it isn’t:
“I’m tired and unhappy. I’ve got a dead-end career; I’m unhappy. My bank account is empty; I’m unhappy. I’m lonely. I’ve no control. I’m envious. I’m humiliated.
“>groan< …the Vikings….”
Transactional Happiness is dependent on other situations or people and can only exist if others perform roles or create situations that YOU assign. Facebook warriors may disagree, but I hold that requiring others to fulfill any role is a violation of all freedoms we enjoy. Transactional Happiness fundamentally cannot exist.
Comparative Happiness is the other dilemma. Social Media has much to answer for, but it’s not solely to blame. Since the beginning of human existence, our lives have been given value via comparison: “Grog have two mammoth foot. Me have one. Poor me.”
The value of happiness is preposterously broken. Human life has never been objectively better and – if you believe news media - subjectively worse. Consider quality of life for any period versus 100 years prior. In 1920, few people had showers and flush toilets on demand, which THIS trucker will tell you are criminally underappreciated.
I hold that the best definition of happiness is Quality of Life minus your Envy.
But happiness cannot be awarded. Wealth, fame and status do not bestow happiness. It’s not a birthright. Show me a trust fund baby and I’ll show you someone likely bored, disconnected, and without purpose. Money can’t buy happiness, even if the hedonist says it can rent you some.
I’ve been homeless and unemployed. Today, I’m not. It took effort towards something meaningful, embracing success and failure, yielding deeper satisfaction. Choosing self-improvement MATTERS. Today, every arduous day behind the wheel makes the totality of my life objectively better. I actively pursue my happiness.
That happiness is retirement in a modest off-grid home that I’m creating in the Colorado Rockies, overlooking a mountain-rimmed valley filled with elk and wild horses; no boss, no alarm clock, no responsibility to anyone other than my family and myself. Days of sweat and exhaustion always end with me snuggled in my bunk and oddly satisfied that my dream is closer, and the legacy for my children established.
I choose the pursuit of happiness for it creates the very foundation of my happiness.
~~~
Julie Iverson | Minneapolis, MN
Silver Medal Winner
The pursuit of happiness HAS made Americans unhappy.
Yes. The pursuit of happiness has made Americans unhappy. Not because the phrase is broken — but because we stopped doing the work it requires.
The concepts are baked into American DNA: the freedom to pursue, the right to define what happiness means for ourselves. That phrase, within "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written" (per Walter Isaacson, 2025) of our great Declaration of Independence, is the embryonic seed and the inheritance of our nation. Our founding fathers embedded it with purpose and intention, but only after debate and edits.
But somewhere along the way, We (the people) have strayed a bit from the intended legacy. The founders likely intended (according to many interpretations) a political and governmental framework. They envisioned supporting the free pursuit of a good life, balanced by others' rights; recognized that personal happiness usually grows from meaningful activity and security, not from a government guarantee of feeling happy. I believe that individuals have stopped defining happiness on their own terms — choosing instead what seemed expected, or easy. And collectively, we have lost the ability to recognize when we've arrived. Where the pursuit of more ends and we can push the plate away, saying, "Thank you. I have enough."
The evidence mounts, however. It shows that delegation of definition and effort, combined with assumption, become counter-productive, if not dangerous. We assumed someone else would define happiness for us. We assumed the institutions would tell us what to chase, and when we'd arrived. We accepted this reduction of effort as a benefit. In short, we distorted "pursuit" into a race. We let "happiness" be defined by someone else. And we've been chasing both ever since — with real consequences.
Without that recognition — without the capacity to choose to stop — pursuit becomes endless. And happiness becomes impossible.
I spent fifty years in that race. In and out of institutions, trying (and failing) to earn credentials that end my pursuit with a trophy diploma on the wall. Diplomas, as we have all been told, prove participation. They are rewarded with jobs, cars and other representations of happiness. I wasn't lazy. I wasn't stupid. I was ADHD before anyone told me that was a thing, stubborn enough to keep trying; and slow to realize the promise of the American dream was illusory. Between ADHD and a false belief that happiness was, somehow, a right, I was increasingly unhappy. The harder I tried, the more the system kept spitting me out.
But here's what the system never told me: I didn't need its permission or credentials to be valuable. I had options.
I found that out working for myself — building something with my own hands, getting paid for my actual contribution, not for a piece of paper. That was my first taste of real validation. Uncredentialed. Unpolished. Mine, as I chose to define it and to earn it.
Even when business setbacks pushed me back to school, I continued to expand my control. This time, something was different: better medical treatment, more maturity, and most importantly — I designed my own path. I finished at sixty-one, in 2017. And for the first time, the degree wasn't proof of anything except that I'd finally stopped asking for permission.
Doors closed anyway.
A brain tumor. Age discrimination. The traditional paths I thought I'd finally unlocked — gone.
But by then, I didn't need them. I had clarity about my goals.
The pursuit didn't fail me because I was chasing the wrong thing. It failed me — and fails most Americans — because we turned it into a race with someone else's finish line, toward someone else's definition of enough.
When I stopped running their race and started defining my own, I finished. And I'm not unhappy.
That's what the pursuit was supposed to deliver all along. Not a destination. Not a title. Not proof.
Just the freedom to define what happiness means — on your own terms. And when you have achieved it.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of that phrase, maybe the question isn't whether it's made us unhappy. Maybe the question is whether we'll finally stop letting someone else tell us what it means.
~~~
Lorie Kolak | Riverside, IL
Bronze Medal Winner
The pursuit of happiness has NOT made Americans unhappy.
The pursuit of happiness itself has not made Americans unhappy. What has made so many Americans, and me too, unhappy is the belief that we must find a guru or storage system or influencer or exercise routine to order our days. We must fit our lives to an existing framework and do it on a schedule. But happiness cannot be pursued and dispatched, as if the prey of a big-game hunt or a SMART goal on an annual review. The pursuit of happiness is an excavation of meaning: a reckoning with circumstance and personal character. Happiness arises out of the mess of our peculiar, zigzag lives. Americans value endless possibility, but the pursuit of happiness is a creative confrontation with limits.
I am a stay-at-home mom of three kids. When my children were very young, every new milestone fomented a crisis of confidence in me. How should I handle this unfamiliar moment? I read pediatrician handouts. I asked my parents. I quizzed other parent-friends. I read parenting manuals. Underlying my research project was the belief that challenges were problems, and problems had solutions. A happier life waited on the other side of this obstacle, or surely the next one. I could prevent problems with the right foundational habits. Careful sculpting of myself would, in turn, sculpt my children into their best selves.
None of it worked, or didn’t work for long. My oldest hated writing. My middle loved screens. My youngest refused quiet time. There was always another book with another approach to consider. Yet the more I read, the unhappier I felt. The presence of obstacles was evidence I hadn’t prevented them. There was no definitive solution, or perhaps I was doing it wrong?
This parenting approach came to an abrupt halt when I was diagnosed with breast cancer on my first mammogram. My kids were 2, 6, and 8. Treatment forced me to relinquish caregiving to my husband, my parents, and helpful friends. I was plagued by fatigue, headaches, and despair at my uselessness. I could solve no problems. My body, which I could not escape, was the problem. Happiness could not lie over some distant horizon if I could only contemplate today and tomorrow. In this bleakness, I considered the smallest unit of mothering I might attempt. Perhaps I could invite one kid at a time into my bedroom to read with me for a short while?
On the first night, the youngest arrived with a flotilla of stuffies. The middle child sighed when he slipped under the duvet. The eldest told me stories from his day. I realized that my intolerance for noise and chaos in illness created an opening for intimacy: a set-aside time with each child, which they seemed to crave. Even in my ailing state, my body was a comfort to them. And their little wriggly selves were a comfort to me.
But I was not done with that big-game hunt. I asked the older kids to read aloud one page, if I read the next. I ran my fingers under the words for the youngest. They tensed with concentration, then glowered with exhaustion. I grew rigid and a headache rose up. These physical responses, in them and in me, were signals that I’d turned love into control, again. The kids recognized this was a trick before I did. Homework disguised as intimacy.
In a responsive moment, on a proceeding night, I told each child that I would read aloud because I loved reading aloud, and I really do. This was why reading was my smallest unit of mothering. They could listen or draw or rest. I wanted nothing from them but their warm presence, which they seemed happy to give. We each picked books that interested us. The ritual named itself: one-on-ones. My treatment lasted three years and two more since have passed, and now we read science fiction, mystery novels, and biographies.
One-on-ones began in despair but yielded a meaningful adaptation. I did not need to sculpt myself, nor did I need my children to be their best selves to find happiness as a mother. I could not be anyone other than who I am, and neither could they. One-on-ones was organic to my character and defined by conditions I never would have chosen. Limits reveal what is most important, our smallest units of meaning. From this distillation of self and purpose, we can create durable rituals, honest relationships, and generous communities, the very stuff of happiness.
~~~
Thaddeus McCamant | Frazee, MN
Bronze Medal Winner
The pursuit of happiness HAS made Americans unhappy.
The American pursuit of happiness is making people less happy. In my sixty five years I have met happy people, unhappy people, and people who have devoted their lives to pursuing happiness. I have yet to meet a happy person who whose happiness arose from pursuing happiness.
For most of history, most people were too busy trying to find a safe home and enough food to worry about being happy. Yet even in the ancient world, the wealthy found happiness to be elusive. The writer of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes had vineyards, gold, and concubines, but declared that life was futile. By the mid 20th century, the U.S. was the wealthiest and most powerful country in history, but millions of its wealthy citizens were not happy. Hundreds of self-help gurus, real gurus and psychologists devoted their careers to telling Americans how to become happy. The relentless focus on pursuing happiness did not make Americans happy. When the World Population Survey started measuring happiness, the U.S. always ranks low for a wealthy nation. In 2025, we were 22nd, which is below our northern neighbor and statistically tied with our southern neighbor.
The happiness business needed to sell a product that people wanted to buy, which meant simple solutions with few sacrifices. Timothy Leary summed up most of the advice in 1967 by telling people to “Tune in, Turn on and Drop out.” Many who tuned into Leary’s drug of choice, LSD, had their lives destroyed. Many who turned on to meditation did well. Dropping became a national obsession. Dropping out wasn’t new. A decade earlier, Jack Kerouac told people to go on the road. A decade later, Jimmy Buffett told people to change latitudes. In the last decades of the twentieth century, people dropped out of marriages and out of the rat race. Millions left the corrupting influence of civilization or the crime of the cities to go back to nature.
Happiness, like the end of a rainbow, was always a few steps away. People who left their mundane societal obligations so that they could dedicate their lives to pursuing happiness often became miserable, including my father.
Like Timothy Leary, my father grew up in a house of privilege, attended an Ivy League school and had professional success followed by disillusionment with the hollowness of American life. When meditation and yoga did not lead to his longed for happiness, he moved to a commune, then art school, and finally he went full Kerouac, leaving his family and career to wander the country. When he reached retirement age, he had no house, a small social security check and estranged grandchildren.
I was 16 when my father entered the commune and exited my life. My father was too proud to ask for help, but I was too poor not to ask. I needed school for free lunches, a safe place for the day, and degrees that could lead me out of poverty. People wanted to help me. They gave me jobs, meals, rides and an occasional bed. The farmers, bus drivers and mechanics who helped me were all happier than my father. They had jobs that gave them purpose, they were helping others, and they were members of their communities.
In the twenty first century, social scientists who study happiness quickly realized that helping others, long term friendships and community were important components of happiness. Being part of a community requires compromise and subverting your will towards the good of the group. Many of the people who pursued happiness wanted freedom and carefree lifestyles instead of sitting in a school board meeting.
When I was 38, I lost a job teaching college. I had been unhappy for months, and when my dismissal became official, my first goal was to try to be happy, knowing that being hired was impossible in my state. I started slowly by smiling in front of my classes. I connected with friends and found support in the community. Six months later I landed a job as an agriculture teacher and consultant, helping people similar to those who helped me two decades earlier, and most of those people were happy. Happiness is much easier to achieve when surrounded by happy people.
Anyone can surround themselves with happy people. They volunteer at soup kitchens, visit prisons and take care of the sick at hospitals. They stock shelves at thrift stores and plant flowers for community gardens. They are not pursuing happiness. They find happiness in their pursuits.
~~~
Did you miss the 2026 debate? Click below to see it on YouTube!
Watch the 2026 Think-Off Debate on YouTubeHonorable Mentions / Alternates:
The Think-Off Committee also awarded Honorable Mention recognitions to the following essayists:
The pursuit of happiness HAS made Americans unhappy:
- Solape Adetutu Adeyemi - Lagos, Nigeria
- Suraj Gupta - Bihar, India
- David Lee - Bellaire, Texas
The pursuit of happiness has NOT made Americans unhappy:
- Laurie Fitz - Independence, Minnesota
- Nick Nelson - Madison, Wisconsin
The Honorable Mention essays will be published soon; STAY TUNED!
Questions or want more information? Give us a call at 218-385-3339.
