When you think of Jim Carrey movies, you usually think of The Mask, The Grinch, or even that all-time tops intellectual movie, Dumb and Dumber. Carry's most recent offering entitled, Bruce Almighty is different from the above films in several ways.

First of all, it deals with two important things we search for our whole lives: Happiness and Love.

In the film, Bruce is given divine power for a brief time. Initially, he believes that having such power will now bring him happiness, and on the surface, this newfound power does appear to bring satisfaction and happiness. However, the power is used only for Bruce’s own selfish ambitions, and the results are awful.

Next Bruce tries to use his power to find love. Here again, his search for love is mainly selfish, and that power that he has is used in a self-serving manner and the results, as with the previous search for happiness are again disastrous.

Outside of the movie in our real lives, we are like Bruce, engaged in a constant search for happiness and love. We were led to believe that these two things could simply be bought or won. As we see over and over, this is an illusion.

 We may wrongly believe, for example, that happiness and love might be brought about if only the people in our lives would change for our benefit — or if only they would care for us a little (or a lot) more. This sort of demanding and magical thinking also is doomed to failure.

When we accept the fact that happiness and love are a result of our sacrifice in giving to others, we will be closer to the truth. By working on the relationships with deeds and not just words, we draw closer to these elusive values of love and happiness. As Bruce finds out in the film, it is in giving that we receive these things.

Dr. Phil Scozzaro is a psychologist employed by Blick Clinic, Inc. He is an ad hoc faculty member of the University of Akron. E-mail phil2@mbusa.net .