Happiest place on earth

"One of the most unexpected pieces of advice I received during my travels in search of the happiest place on earth was from a man in Bhutan," says Eric Weiner.

"'To be happy,' he told me, 'you need to set aside a few minutes every day to think about death."' Eric is the author of The Geography of Bliss – One Grump's Search for the Happiest Place on Earth.

And the reason he spent close to a year visiting a clutch of countries and gathering pearls of wisdom like the one above is encapsulated in the subtitle of his book.

"I found that there are many books that focus on the question 'What is happiness?' I wanted to answer the question 'where is happiness?'" he says in an e-mail interview.

US-based Eric had good reason to go in search of the happiest place on the globe: he himself was "not particularly happy".

All in a day's work

One reason for this could have been some of the people he met during the course of his work. A long-time foreign correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), Eric's work entailed "travelling to the world's least happy countries, identifying the least happy people in these countries and then spending a lot of time hanging out with them".

This constant association with unhappy people must surely have contributed to his state of mind. Eric, who is convinced it's better to feel sad than feel nothing, admits that one of his friends even went to the extent of calling him a 'sadness addict'.

"And I think that is about right," he says. A self-confessed grump, Eric believes he is typical of his profession. "Journalists are a sullen lot… It could be because we are exposed to misery on a regular basis," he ventures, attempting to explain his state of mind. And the fact that he is a perfectionist "is certainly a recipe for unhappiness", he admits.

A grump by any other name…

So, apart from being a grump, what else is he?

"When my editor and I sat down to write the subtitle of this book, we considered a lot of words that would describe me," he says. "Curmudgeon, malcontent, crank… I'm all of these things."

But though he frequently ended up spending a lot of time in extremely depressing places, he found his job eminently satisfying. "Oh yes, it was rewarding," says Eric, "but it was also a real bummer."

And then one day a few years ago, the travel bug bit him.
"I thought, why not find out which is the happiest country in the world? Learn why people in that country are happy? What hidden wisdom happy people possess? Also, since I am an unhappy person and one who loves to travel, seeking the happiest place on earth was a natural project."

Eric, who began his search for the happiest place in the world from a gloomy library in the Netherlands, would soon realise that wisdom can be found in the least likely
of places – like Bhutan, for instance.

His search would take him to countries as diverse as Thailand and Iceland, Moldova and Qatar and he would find that the prerequisites for a person's happiness vary widely across the globe.

The joy yardstick

So, how did he go about measuring the happiness of people? More importantly, what is his definition of happiness?

That last question is a tricky one, says Eric, proceeding to answer it first."Social scientists define happiness as a subjective feeling – if you say you're happy, then you are happy. I think that is an incomplete definition. My favourite definition is the one by Noah Webster, who compiled the first American dictionary.

'Happiness,' he wrote, 'is the agreeable sensation that springs from the enjoyment of the good'. We want to be happy, yes, but for the right reasons."

And as for measuring happiness, "Quite a few social scientists who are studying happiness measure it by asking people, 'Overall, how happy are you these days?'

"These experts claim that we are remarkably good at gauging our own happiness. Besides, if you don't know how happy you are, then who does?" asks Eric.

He definitely has a point: we are the best judges of our happiness levels. But how is happiness related
to a physical place? Also, if you are basically a happy person, won't you be happy in the most physically comfortable places?

"No, I don't think so," says the author, again preferring to answer the second query first, while drawing on over a decade's experience of reporting from more than 30 countries, "most of them profoundly unhappy".

"By place, I mean cultural place and not merely physical. We are products of our particular national culture, and that affects our levels of happiness."

Eric must know. He visited Iraq several times during the reign of Saddam Hussain and was also in Afghanistan in 2001 when the Taliban regime fell.

"Two of the best years of my life I spent based in New Delhi, covering everything from an outbreak of plague to India's economic reforms, before I moved to Tokyo," he says.

Having seen and experienced life in its various hues in some of the most uncomfortable places, Eric is convinced that nobody can be happy in all places. "Can you be happy married to just anyone?" he asks.

Who to blame?

Eric suggests that the self-help industry might be responsible for making a lot of people unhappy.

"One of the shortcomings of the 'self-help industry' is that we are told to look inward to find the source of our happiness when much of our happiness depends on our environment," he says.

So is there a simple formula to be happy?

"If you are unhappy, change your environment," says Eric. "Do that and you could change your life."

But don't get him wrong; Eric is not suggesting that happiness equals running away from problems. "Oh no," he says. "It is simply recognising that where we are affects who we are."

There are many countries that are clearly happier than others, says Eric. And there are many reasons for it – geographic location, cultural heritage, peace and stability, familial ties…
All these factors have a bearing on a resident's happiness quotient.

How he did it

Since visiting and spending time in every country in the world would have been a well-nigh impossible task, Eric decided to create a short list of nations "based on fairly reliable data". To this end, he set off to a place called The World Database of Happiness. Yes, there really is such a place! It's in The Netherlands.

"It contains mankind's accumulated knowledge about what makes us happy and, even more important, where we are happy. Physically, it's an unassuming, even ugly place, but it's fascinating," he says, describing the World Database of Happiness on his website.

This list is based on a number of factors prevailing in the various countries and was drawn up after fairly extensive interviews conducted with natives of individual countries.

Making a list, checking it twice

List made, Eric travelled to Iceland, Bhutan, India and Moldova, among other places. He had truly exciting times in many of the countries.

"I found myself caught up in a coup in Thailand; eating rotten shark in Iceland and was forced to kick my coffee habit at an ashram in India."

So, how did he actually conduct his study? Did he ask the man on the road whether he was happy?

"First, let me tell you that I did not conduct a study," clarifies Eric. "I wrote a book. I used the 'science of happiness' as a partial guide but also relied on my skills as a foreign correspondent. So, no, I did not ask people on the street if they were happy but, rather, sought introductions to thoughtful people in each country I visited."

Were there any surprises during his quest for the happiest place on the planet?

"Yes, many," says Eric. "The biggest one, I think, is that the happiest places in the world are not tropical lands [as many people are wont to believe] but cold, dark places like Denmark and Iceland."

That said one of the finest places I visited was Bhutan, he says. "It was one place where I wanted to spend the most time. Why? Because it's so darned difficult to get there. And so beautiful. Why leave?"

Happiness is…

Since he spent time in some of the happiest places on earth, he must definitely know what the elements of happiness are, right?

"Yes," he says. "Quite simply they are: trust, family and a willingness to indulge in something you wouldn't do often."

Did his outlook on happiness change after he visited all those places he mentions in the book?

"Yes," says Eric. "I came to realise that happiness is not a personal matter, as people in the West tend to think, but rather is derived from our relationships with others."

Does he believe wealth can contribute to happiness?

"If you believe money can buy happiness, then the residents of Qatar must be happy, right?" he asks.

"Well, we need some money in order to be happy, yes, but beyond a certain point more money does not equal more happiness," says Eric, who also spent a fairly large amount of time in the Gulf country.

And which is the happiest country in the world?

It may be hard to believe, but it is not one of the really rich countries, he says.

So, given a chance, which country would he choose to settle down in?

"Probably India," says Eric. "It's a difficult country in many ways but also an immensely rewarding one. The best and worst of humanity can be found within its borders."

So is the one-time grump a happier man now that he knows what it takes to be happy?

"I am less unhappy," he says.