Happiness depends upon ourselves. - Aristotle

Book recommendation: The Geography of Bliss

I began reading this book and am completely absorbed by the content. A correspondent for NPR decided to visit the countries with the highest "happiness rating" to determine what makes a place one of the happiest in the world. It is part-travel and part-psychology, completely intriguing. While in Bhutan, learning about collective happiness, he came to the conclusion that "trust is a prerequisite for happiness. . . . Several studies, in fact, have found that trust - more than income or even health - is the biggest factor in determining our happiness." If this is indeed the case, no wonder the US scores so low on the rating scale. Though we have great wealth in resources, trust in neighbors, the government, institutions, everything, is often absent. Another point he made later (in Iceland) caught my eye: that happiness and unhappiness are not two sides of the same coin but are different coins entirely. Icelandic people he met told him that they "cherish (their) melancholia" and that "you nurture your little melancholia, and it's like a buzz that makes you feel alive. You snap yourself a little bit and you feel this relief of how fragile life is and how tremendously fragile you are." I agree with the assessment that you must have pain to know when you feel pleasure. The book is definitely opening me up to new understanding of happiness and forcing me to recall what I learned while getting my psych degree.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth. - George Bernard Shaw

Addendum: I finished the book and the entire thing was just as good as it began. A tip I picked up from Thailand is that relationships come before problems, and preserving a realtionship is more important than addressing a disturbance. The Thai also have a good sense of when to say "never mind" and actually forget something, instead of the bitter American "never mind" that actually means something else entirely. Excellent read.