This particular commercial showed middle-aged surfers running out of palm fronds onto the beach, a Gen-Xer lounging in a sparse, stylin' loft, a snappy young woman of the class formerly known as "yuppies" walking down a San Francisco street. The lighting was green and deep blue, the music was New Agey: it was the kind of ad that leaves you wondering the whole time what on earth it could be selling. 

"You can always tell the people who have handled their money well," says a voiceover after a few of these idylls. "They are more enlightened." 

From there, it went into the boring part about buying a three-year callable CD from Mellon Bank. But the point is taken. 

Let me explain. First of all, I love commercials. They are like little dreams that invade the sleep of a network hour, juicy fantasies floating up from television's subconscious, riddled with sex, money, power and eight-minute abs. 

But this Mellon Bank commercial has been bugging me because it's not the usual script. The people in it are not just beautiful and happy. They are "more enlightened" than the rest of us. Where I'm from, people who make a killing off the stock market arc usually described as having, instead, "more money" than the rest of us. Could the writers of this ad have made a copyediting error? Probably not.

Most of the people I know want to be happy. Most of them want to make money. Some of them (the aging Californians) want to be enlightened. Generally, they want to make money so they can be happy.

But rarely, if ever, do they think that they will reach enlightenment through money. 

In fact, most of what Mr. Buddha said circa 450 B.C. about enlightenment was that it's not something you can get (at a low everyday price) at Wal-Mart. 

But this ad hoped that watchers would confuse picture with word, would begin to believe that "enlightened" is an upholstery color offered by Ethan Allen, or perhaps a cut of khakis, or how you imagine you will feel when your take your wobbly, sedentary, stress-knotted body for its two days of vacation in the virgin paradise of Orlando, Fla. 

Other words have met similar fates. "Serenity'" is a brand of incontinence pads. "Privilege" is a clothing store in a Beverly Hills mall. You can buy window and door hinges called "Truth." 

But they aren't going to fool me. I have personally decided that money is going to mean money, and enlightenment enlightenment, and happiness will simply be happiness (except when it sneaks in disguised as an early-morning city street glowing with snow).

And thanks to the MUTE button, I can make sure they stay separate.