[Assam] 'Grump' travels the planet to find bliss - CNN

[Ram Sarangapani]

Want happiness (& bliss) Bhutan is not far away!

"*Bhutan* <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/bhutan> is probably the closest
thing on Earth to Shangri-La, that fictional paradise," Weiner explained

But don't forget John Stuart Mill, when he said "Ask youself if you are
happy, and you cease to be so"

:)

--Ram

 By A. Pawlowski
CNN
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*(CNN)* -- It may take a lot of frequent-flier miles, a penchant for cold
places, a tolerance of taxes and regular doses of chocolate, but happiness
could be within reach. However, it's not where most people might expect.
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Journalist Eric Weiner says he wanted to explore the relationship between
place and happiness.
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Just ask Eric Weiner, who made it his mission to find the most content
places around the globe, uncovering lots of surprises along the way.

Hungering for a tropical paradise? A warm climate doesn't necessarily make a
happy nation, Weiner said.

Thinking of moving to a wealthy state? Money can degrade happiness, he
found.

Weiner, who wrote the book, "The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for
the Happiest Places in the World," began his quest for very personal
reasons.

"I'm an unhappy person, so it's kind of what prompts a hungry person to
search for food," he said.

Weiner spent 10 years as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio,
a job that took him to some of the least happy places in the world.

It was enough to send him on a yearlong journey to look for just the
opposite.

Weiner mapped out his quest with a combination of scientific and personal
methods, choosing some countries because they traditionally score high on
happiness surveys and selecting others to see how factors like money play a
role.

A world map of happiness, based on 100 different studies and produced by
Britain's University of Leicester in 2006, listed Denmark as the world's
happiest nation.

But for Weiner, the place where he felt the most bliss was a toss-up between
Bhutan and Iceland, countries that ranked eighth and fourth, respectively,
on the happiness map. Weiner's list of favorites also included Thailand,
India and Switzerland. *See photos of his favorites and listen to him
explain why they're happy
»*<http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/02/07/happiest.places/index.html#cnnSTCOther1>
 The keys to joyEric Weiner on happiness:

• "Happiness is other people, much more than we think. Personal happiness is
an oxymoron. It really is about relationships with friends, family,
strangers."

• "The happiest countries I found actually do not contemplate happiness all
that much, at least not in the personal way that we do."

• "The great irony is that most Americans are pursuing happiness, but the
pursuit of happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness."

• "I think you can change your mood and level of happiness by moving
somewhere. It doesn't mean you're running away from something, you might be
running to something."

His top two picks, though very different countries, have unconventional
paths to happiness, he said.

"*Bhutan* <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/bhutan> is probably the closest
thing on Earth to Shangri-La, that fictional paradise," Weiner explained.

He pointed out that while other countries focus on their gross domestic
product, the Himalayan kingdom proudly touts its policy of "gross national
happiness."

"The Bhutanese very much believe that happiness should be part and parcel of
every government decision," Weiner said.

*Cold place, warm relationships*

Thousands of miles away, Weiner found happiness in a very different
environment, marveling at the creativity and "coziness" of
*Iceland*<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/iceland>.


"Everyone in Iceland is a poet," Weiner recalled.

He visited the country during winter and said he found a certain beauty in
the cold and the darkness. Such a chilly climate usually encourages warm
relationships, Weiner found.

"The cold inspires people to cooperate, traditionally. If you go back a few
hundred years, people in cold climates have to cooperate or they die
together. It's that simple," he said.

Weiner found a different flavor of happiness in
*Switzerland*<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/switzerland>,
where he discovered people are content partly because everything runs like
clockwork. Simple pleasures like trains arriving on time contributed to
national happiness, he said.

But there may be a much sweeter reason why Switzerland is a happy place.

"The Swiss eat a lot of chocolate, and let's not forget that," Weiner said.

He was also impressed with how the Swiss view money.

"Their attitude is that if you've got it, hide it. While our attitude is if
you've got it, flaunt it," Weiner said, comparing the Swiss to Americans.

Weiner called the United States, which came in at No. 23 on the University
of Leicester's world map of happiness, a nation that "is not as happy as it
is wealthy."

*The impact of wealth and taxes*

The relationship between money and happiness took Weiner to the Middle East
and *Qatar* <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/qatar>, a country with one of the
highest per capita incomes in the world, thanks to oil and natural gas
revenues, according to the CIA World Factbook.

"I went there specifically to examine what happens when the entire country
wins the lottery," Weiner said. He found the wealth made the residents
comfortable, but also degraded their level of contentment.

"Most of our happiness is derived from our relationships with other people,"
Weiner said. "The money in Qatar has allowed them to wall themselves off,
literally and figuratively, from other people. ... That's not a recipe for
happiness."

There are no income taxes in Qatar, but that's not a cause for contentment,
Weiner found. Some taxation is necessary for happiness because it's a way of
being invested in a place, he argued.

"You're giving money to someone else, a government, and you're trusting them
to do something good with it," Weiner said. "In a country where there's no
taxation at all, people don't have vested interests in how well the
government performs. You can't say, 'Hey, those are my tax dollars at
work.'"

*Quest creates buzz*

Weiner's book has struck a chord, recently rising to the top 10 of The New
York Times nonfiction best-seller list. An expert who studies happiness said
part of the book's appeal may lie in how Weiner mapped out his journey.

"He arranges an interesting itinerary because he uses science as his
compass," said Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University
and the author of "Stumbling on Happiness."

Gilbert said it's only recently that a combination of biology, sociology and
psychology has been able to answer the "where's and why's" of happiness, a
subject that has always fascinated people.

"The quest for happiness is the central preoccupation of human beings and
has been for as long as there have been human beings," Gilbert said.

He echoed Weiner's findings that bliss is other people.

"Everyone has been telling us for the longest time that happiness is about
social relationships, well, bingo, they're right," Gilbert said.
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Meanwhile, after a year of exploring some of the world's happiest places,
Weiner -- the self-described "grump" -- said his mind-set has improved
somewhat.

"I would describe myself as a recovering grump," Weiner said. "At this
point, I think I am marginally happier than before I started the
project." *E-mail
to a friend*<http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/02/07/happiest.places/index.html#>
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