I Missed International Happiness Day

I Missed International Happiness Day March 22, 2017

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I found out, many hours too late for me to mark the occasion in a timely manner here, that Monday was International Happiness Day. The warm voice of an NPR newscaster filled all the corners of my filthy minivan as I trundled down the highway in the stretching shadows of that first spring evening to take my second daughter to her acrobatics class–the only hour of the week that makes her truly happy.

Part of the festivities for International Happiness Day was the releasing of the list of happiest countries, along with reasons for why they are so happy. Norway wins this year because of their fabulous universal healthcare and free higher education and year long maternity leave for new mothers. America has slipped to fourteen because of our bitterly recriminating political environmental. The story was ushered out by Pharrell Williams singing Happy which made my child shout for me to change the station because, she said, ‘she hates that song.’

‘How can you possibly hate that song?’ I asked, ‘everyone likes this song. Even I like this song.’ She looked at me through the rear view mirror in complete mortification. One thing that appears to make all our children deeply unhappy is that I, their mother, and Matt, their father, have sometimes liked to listen to music both from our pasts and from even more modern singers and musicians. Our children, though, keep a strict Nothing Written After 1900 listening life style, except for the Highland Farewell CD in the car. They are hidebound judgmental purists. I don’t know where this comes from because I’ve been listening to Adele for quite a long time. Maybe that’s the problem.

Anyway, I was curious to discover that International Happiness Day is a UN invention and that it is wound up with both Millennium Development Goals (always a barrel of laughs) and the Smurfs. You can sign a pledge to promise to help work for a happier world, and you can also read a whole bunch of UN resolutions about how Happiness is going to be measurably achieved for the entire the world by some date or other. You might wonder why there are no links in this paragraph but wonder no longer! Cutting in links does not make me happy and so today at least, I’m not going to.

I’ve written on the subject of happiness many other times (again, not linked, because I don’t want to cause myself any pain or irritation) because I’m always curious about the subject, and that it is a founding principle of this American enterprise. Perusing Happiness, however you might define it, strikes me as a curious thing to do mostly because Of Course, but also because How Impossible.

Also, I always think it is funny and charming when massive bureaucratic institutions get wrapped up in subjective and nebulously understood concepts like Happiness. The soaring lofty ideals of the human spirit considered by a room full of suits who think about it carefully and finally put it all down to the measurements of universal healthcare and education is so funny.

But, of course, if you don’t have clean water and you can’t read, you probably aren’t going to be very happy. If you don’t have the basic elements of material comfort and health accounted for, you’re not going to give a high number when the statistician shows up with her clipboard. No one, not even me, thinks we should have less clean water and less education. The problem isn’t with starting with the material, the problem is stopping there. That’s where the discussion usually remains. Once you’ve got the water issues sorted out, and everyone has an iPad, well, then, why isn’t everyone happy?

Really, that’s America’s grand mistake. When whichever hand penned, ‘and the pursuit of happiness’ he wasn’t expecting that we’d all rush out, buy a bigger tv, and then sit around wondering whence cometh the persistent ennui. The vision wasn’t supposed to be material. It was supposed to be about the grand and glorious ideals of freedom and stuff like that.

Anyway, today is National Common Curtesy Day so that’s pretty wonderful. I wonder if the UN has any resolutions about it. I bet this day could go a long way to solving the happiness deficit. But maybe that’s too crazy an idea.


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