Measuring Happiness

Since reading The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner I’ve been thinking about happiness. Yes, it’s not quantifiable, yes, everyone has a different perspective and definition of happiness, but does it really matter? If you believe you are happy, isn’t that all that really matters? And when you’re unhappy, you know you’re NOT happy.
Having spent the last two days in Fiji, I asked myself, what makes these people so happy? They always respond with a smile and “Bula!” (hello, and welcome). I haven’t seen a single grumpy person. Of course, I’m a tourist and they are supposed to be welcoming, but I asked several Fijians if they were happy, and they all answered “yes.” When asked why, responses varied from short term to long term happiness: “We saw the Kadavu whistling dove” (meaning, we had a good morning, everyone in the group saw a bird that only lives on this island, an endemic) to “Life is good.” A tour guide explained to us that Fijians are happy because they have plenty of food, land is abundant, and most importantly, they have lots of friends and family around them. If someone is poor, it has no relation to their monetary state of affairs, it means that they have no one to be with, they are lonely. So people are wealth. Certainly, it helps that there is no lack of food resources – lots of fresh fish, food grows well in this environment – the weather is good, except for occasional storms; but there are also not great social and economic divides. In his book, The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner mentions that societies with social and economic equality are happiest. We saw the Prime Minister of Fiji having a picnic with his family at an offshore island. There were perhaps 50 people (friends and family) spending the day at the beach and not a single guard or gun to be seen. We cruised by in our zodiac (inflatable motor boat holding 10-12 people) and all the people swimming in the water waved and shouted “Bula!” No threat, people don’t seem to do that around here!
Not that Fiji hasn’t had its political problems in the recent past, but the common man is still happy. At dinner the other night we theorized that this might be due to short term goals rather than setting long term goals. The man who saw the Kadavu whistling dove was happy today, but if it were just one bird on his list of 10,000 birds to find in his life, would he still be happy? Would we all be happier with short term goals, rather than long term goals? Back to the beginning, what’s happy?