Happy "International Day of 😀"!

Just in Time: Not sure if Jayme Illien would have anticipated this, that the 2021 IDH would coincide with the world still struggling with all of the vicissitudes of the pandemic due to COVID-19, and that it would coincide with the vernal equinox this year (can vary by about a day depending on where you reside), AND would coincide with me writing to you about strategies to sustain this thing called "HAPPINESS", despite the world and local events of which we continue to be bombarded in the daily news cycle. Mr. Illien, who spent many of his childhood years in a Mother Teresa orphanage, repeatedly petitioned the UN to endorse the idea of "Happiness" being a basic human right, as well as an ongoing economic-political system aimed at ending inequality throughout the globe. He was partially successful in the former quest when the UN passed a resolution in 2012 and started to formally acknowledge IDH in 2013, which has been celebrated continuously (well, at least one day a year, kind of like your birthday).

 And the Winner is...Wait, before the envelope is opened, the final votes are tabulated (sound like "American Idol", "Miss America", "Oscars", even the old "Ed Sullivan Show", in which suspense builds?), you need to know what the criteria included, how the UN, at least, judges your and my HAPPINESS, which includes: healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, GDP, generosity, social supports (friends, family, and beyond), "perceived corruption", and the current overall mood ('ambience') of the respondents. Most of these are probably intuitive to you, but what about "perceived corruption"?! I guess they are assuming corruption in every case, whether or not we are aware of it...

And the Winner is...Wait, before I finally open the envelope, just another nod to those making the decisions, those social scientists who study such an apparently abstract concept like happiness, like those from "Encyclopedia Britannica", the all knowing, general knowledge go-to source (which used to be sold door to door by lots of college students in my days, who have displaced by eBooks), HAPPINESS is "the degree to which an individual is healthy, comfortable, able to participate in or enjoy events". The salient ingredients of which can be broken down further...

And the Winner is...One more thing, as it turns out, it's NOT the weather but instead it's whether the country in question embodies the noted active ingredients for HAPPINESS, as the winner FOR THE FOURTH YEAR running is FINLAND👏👏! Followed by Iceland, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands...the only non European country breaking into the top ten is New Zealand at #9...do you see a pattern here (and wonder whether the panel has more judges from Europe--scandal!)...that all but one of the top ten countries have "land" in their name...which brings to mind the song "This land is your land, this land is my land..." Perhaps if we remind the panel we are "...the land of the free and home of the brave...". In any case, the good news for us Yanks is that we have moved up to #14👏! Displacing Canada, which has moved to #15 (Sorry, "eh")

And the Winner is...Us, YOU and ME! That is, in addition to some surprises of various nations outscoring others, the pollsters were initially bewildered there was not an overall decline among respondents, despite the ongoing pandemic--one of the researchers, upon reviewing the responses further, theorized that people see COVID-19 as a common, outside threat and that this has generated a "...greater sense of solidarity and fellow-feeling...". Haven't I been telling you that, despite the almost continuous declarations of a lot of mainline media that we are "hopelessly divided, doomed", we are actually far from it and are collectively able to 'pull it together'...enough to put a smile on your face, eh?

Happy 'HAPPY DAY'!