Last weekend, CBS Sunday Morning’s feature about “Happiness” was not a total surprise. What could be a better subject for television’s second happiest show, second only to Sesame Street?

Since its beginning over 40 years ago, I’ve happily watched this TV magazine offer features of everyone from the band U2 to chef Ina Garten, and everything from migrating monarch butterflies to Ferrari manufacturing in Italy. It’s always new knowledge, perfect for a Nosy Nellie like me, curious about everything. Last week’s lead story was Happiness, and even academia weighed in.

Harvard has been studying Adult Development for 84 years (even JFK was a participant). One of the study’s important subjects is happiness. Turns out that happiness comes not from money, looks, or fame, but from meaningful relationships at every level.

Lifelong happiness is a life filled with friendship. It begins with Sharing, and moves through stages: Comfort, Security, and Intimacy – no, not THAT Intimacy. Sharing your deepest feelings in the relationship is the final step.

I started thinking about my friends and our individual relationships to each other; they grew from different times, places and experiences. My best friend, Ginger, in New York City and I go back to the beginning of our work lives in the Big Apple. We were wide-eyed newbies, thrown together in training at American Airlines. We became roommates first, then friends. Then good friends. Then best friends. It all began with sharing.

We shared more than a crummy one-bedroom apartment, utility bills, and Oreos. We shared everyday chitchat about the job: crew members, turbulence, celebrities, heartwarming experiences and lecherous passengers. We became comfortable with each other. Gradually, we began to share our beliefs, our opinions, and our personal histories. By then we were sharing cold spaghetti for breakfast. And mostly we laughed. That was important. Not everyone we knew laughed – or cried – at the same things we did.

Genuine caring easily followed as our friendship grew and extended to each other’s wedding parties and continued into our lives with anniversaries, Godparenthood, weekends, illnesses, family funerals. We still remember each other’s original wedding day, although we lost both those men. Years after, we still reach out on our deceased husbands’ birthdays. That’s Intimacy. I know she hurts on that heart-memory day, just as much as I do on mine.

Security in a relationship is when we know that we can absolutely, positively depend on the other person – for anything. Bail money? Wire cutters? Well, not exactly. But if I did have those needs … Ginger would find a way.

A few years ago, during a January blizzard in Boston, I was trying to fly back to Buffalo.

After 16 hours of delays, cancellations, and rerouting, Ginger picked me up in New York(!) at 3 a.m. and drove me straight to her guest room. Six hours later, she delivered me back to the airport for my new flight with a warm breakfast in my tummy and enough good sleep to drive from Buffalo to home. We should all have at least one person to call at 3 a.m. Even Harvard’s study agreed.

Regular readers know that I talk to people – strangers – and sometimes they become acquaintances. Most are just passers-by, but 99% of the time, that short chat brightens my day.

Friendships take time, and truth be told, a bit of work. But a meaningful relationship is worth the investment.

One of the Sunday Morning experts offered a formula for creating relationships: 50 hours to make a comfortable acquaintance. Then, 90 hours to make a good friend, and 200 hours to make a best friend. Personally, I would say those are minimums. Being a person of the elderly persuasion, I’ve had some friends for many moons. I count my time investment in decades.

The friends from w-a-a-a-y back include my hometown bestie of 70 years, and the aforementioned Ginger, 60 years. Over time, wonderful women have come into my life in other jobs, towns, churches, clubs, volunteering and across the card table. I’ve been enriched by their friendships, learned from all of them, and can honestly say I have come to love them.

I’ve even made a new dear friend through this column who lives in another state. She is sharing, caring, and comfortable, all the basics for a meaningful relationship. And I’ve been blessed with a handful of men whose friendships I treasure.

We all want to be happy. Maybe, as Americans, we think happiness is our birthright.

Fuggedaboudit. The founding fathers only wrote about the PURSUIT of happiness. Finding that happiness is up to us.

Today, I’m going to tell a friend I love her. She is part of my happiness, the very best dividend of investing in friendship.

Marcy O’Brien can be reached at Moby.32@hotmail.com