Why I am Happy?

Last night I watched the 20/20 program on Happiness and it didn’t surprise me to learn that in their research they found Denmark to be the happiest country on earth, nor was it much of a surprise to learn the U.S. is 23rd. I suppose they thought the Finns were a little too melancholy to be first…however according to the stats Iceland is 4th and Finland 6th.

Business Week's October 11, 2006 issue has a link to click to view each of the happiest countries. To take a tour of the world's happiest countries, click the thumbnails at the end of the article. Our neighbor to the north is 10th.

I have google alerts on several subjects, “Finns and Finnish” for example and yesterday it hit a blog in which the young author wrote this: “One thing I found odd in Finland was that there was no generation gap. The young people liked the older people. The old people liked the younger people. The children liked their parents. The parents liked their children.

Not only that, but there was no gender gap. Men and women liked each other. Feminism was something that Finnish people laughed about as an American invention. Finnish women were equal to men, and always had been. If a tire blew on a car, it was not at all unthinkable for the woman to jump out and fix it, without a thought. Not only that, but everyone Finnish seemed to like Finland altogether. They felt they had won the lottery by being born Finnish.”

October 27 of 2004 I wrote on this blog the 10 things that make a Finn happy. If that Finn, whose grandparents all came from Finland, the 6th happiest place in the world, lives in America, the 23rd happiest place in the world, does that make them less happy?