69% of Canadians are Happy. How about you?

69% of Canadians are Happy. How about you?

In this recent survey

Canadians appear to be among the happiest people in the world.

Here are the top 10 countries:

1. Denmark: 72%
2. Canada: 69%
2. Sweden: 69%
4. Australia: 66%
5. Finland: 64%
5. Venezuela: 64%
7. Israel: 63%
7. New Zealand: 63%
9. Netherlands: 62%
9. Ireland: 62%

Here are the bottom 10 countries:

1. Chad: 1%
2. Central African Republic: 2%
3. Haiti: 2%
4. Burkina Faso: 3%
5. Cambodia: 3%
6. Niger: 3%
7. Tajikistan: 3%
8. Tanzania: 4%
9. Mali: 4%
10. Comoros: 4%


How about you at this particular point in time? How about in the long run?
There are various happiness tests/surveys out on the web that purport to tell you whether and how happy you are and even give guidance to improve your 'happiness quotient'.

I am in the process of creating my own "Happiness Test". Watch for it.
When complete, I'll post the link here.

A Greek philosophy professor of mine many years ago likened happiness to "butterfly landing on you". I thought it a very apt analogy. It is like being at the right place at the right time under the right conditions. There is an element of luck (fate?) involved.

And yet we can enable such moments so that they can happen and can happen more than once. Think of luck as the crossroads of opportunity and preparation rather than merely a haphazard occurrence.

So much has been written over the centuries about happiness that I cannot and will not provide a historical survey here. I will comment on a few important points and then give my two cents.

America is quite unique in that they put the pursuit of happiness into the very preamble to their great constitution. Interestingly, however, this nation founded on the notion that its people have the "right to the pursuit of happiness" is not in the latest top ten happiest nations.

This is relevant to politics and economics because politics can and does indeed affect the happiness of people. Think of Robert Mugabe. Did his politics enable the happiness of the black mobs to whom he gave the white farmers' farms? (Not to speak of the white farmers.) Does democracy facilitate greater happiness? I believe it does. Happiness founded on economic freedom without political freedom is a false happiness. It is founded on sticks that will easily crumble. Think of China.


The dimensions of happiness (which we manage individually and as nations and a world) in my view are (in no particular order):


* a life in accord with one's spirit
* success
* personal comfort
* security
* work or some occupation that engages one
* interest
* freedom
* self-knowledge
* good fortune
* love
* friendship and family
* usefulness
* good wine (for this read some physical pleasures)

There are certainly things we can add to this list, which depends on our own lives and values. Beauty is an important variable for me, but personal comfort is pleasant but not essential. There is a continuum for each dimension as well.

There are enemies of happiness too, which are important to consider. In many ways they are simply the antithesis of the above enabling factors. Some of these enemies include:

* anomie and other disconnectedness and frustration
* failure
* low self-esteem and attacks on self-esteem
* poverty and material impoverishment
* fear
* illness
* loneliness
* boredom
* enslavement
* bad luck
* ignorance


Feel free to add your own to these lists. Reflect on these variables as they apply to your life now, in the past and in the future.

Happiness is not just something that happens. Some people are more disposed to it than others. But it can be enabled.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad