Happy Places

Your happiness might depend on where you live. The University of Leicester has been studying subjective well-being on a global scale and produced a World Map of Happiness. A self-described grump, Eric Weiner, used this map to travel to happy places. He studied also why these places tend to be happier. Reading the CNN book review, it sounds like one key factor is community: Weiner found that colder places forced people to cooperate more and build stronger relationships, which in turn made people happier. One of the wealthiest places on Earth, Qatar, on the other hand, is marred by distrust and isolation – not a happy place despite a population with one of the highest per capita income in the world. Another, related factor that Weiner mentions in the SFGate interview is trust: the greater the sense of trust among people, the happier the people are. Other observations, Weiner made that I find interesting: the search for happiness and the feeling of happiness seem to be inversely related. As Weiner puts it, “The happiest countries I found actually do not contemplate happiness all that much, at least not in the personal way that we do.”

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