The Happiest Place on Earth.
That’s where we spent the last three days of our vacation. But I’m not sure it was the happiest place on Earth. Sure, we smiled a lot, we laughed, we had a lot of fun. But I can think of at least one instance where we weren’t so happy. Standing in line, waiting for the highly acclaimed Highschool Musical pep rally to get started in front of the gi-normous Mickey’s Sorcerer’s Hat at MGM, feeling the sun beat down on us, watching other mothers try to move their kids ahead of mine as we all jostled for position only to have Mr. Happy Himself (who really wasn’t that happy), an older man who was the appointed Disney cast member responsible for asking those mothers to stay out of the “aisle” which in my view was just a way to torment and torture all of us as we were forced to stand like cattle in a cattle shoot waiting for the ropes to come down so we could all crowd around a big taped off square to watch the 25-minute performance while we dripped with sweat and of course, were all really happy. It so did not look like what we saw on the Disney Channel.
Personally, some of my favorite moments at Disney World have always been watching other parents with their children, standing in the middle of The Happiest Place on Earth, shaking their finger at their sobbing offspring and yelling “you will get on that ride and you will have fun doing it or we are going home and you will never get to see Mickey again!” There’s nothing like a few threats to keep the happiness real.
In all seriousness, though, I am probably the happiest when I am with my husband and my son, spending time together. We had some GREAT times together on this vacation and as I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I am learning a lot about priorities and balance and trying to weigh what’s really important with what really isn’t, which is one of the reasons I’ve been so out of the loop when it comes to the phone and to email (again, if you’ve contacted me and you haven’t heard from me, don’t take it personally, please, I will be following up this week as I make my way through the digital mound).
So, in a first for this blog, I thought I’d spend some time in a short series, looking at what happiness is, what it means, how important is it, and how do we achieve it – or is it really something that is achieved?
Measuring Happiness
Did you know there are actually a couple of studies that are done to determine exactly where the Happiest Place on Earth is? It’s true and apparently it’s Denmark.
Last year, a scientist took the honor of being the first to map out a world map of happiness and through his surveying of 80,000 people from around the world, he determined that Denmark was the happiest place on earth followed closely by Switzerland and Austria. Health played the most important role in determining happiness, and prosperity and education were the next strongest factors.
One point I found interesting was that a recent BBC survey indicated the majority of the population (we’re talking United Kingdom) believed “the government should focus on making us happier rather than wealthier.”
Of course this raises the question – does our environment dictate our happiness? Or does something exist within each individual that is responsible for whether that person is happy or not? Can you be happy in miserable conditions? Can you be miserable in wonderful conditions?
Tomorrow we’ll look a bit at what the Bible says about happiness and how it’s related to faith. I hope you’ll join me!
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