Or, to be more precise, the line between out there and in here is not as sharply defined as we think. Happiness is not inside of us but out there. This axiom of the self-help industrial complex is so deeply ingrained as to be self-evident. If I’m not happy, they counsel, then I’m not digging deep enough. My bookshelf is a towering, teetering monument to existential angst, brimming with books informing me that happiness lies deep inside of me.
I never met a self-help book I didn’t like. Thus I, and millions of others, suffer from the uniquely modern malady that historian Darrin McMahon calls “the unhappiness of not being happy.” It is no fun at all.Īnd so, like many others, I’ve worked at it. Today, though, not only is happiness considered possible for anyone to attain, it is expected. Happiness, in this life, on this earth, was a prize reserved for the gods and the fortunate few. For most of human history, I would have been considered normal. As a child, my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh character was Eeyore. I am not a happy person, never have been. Originally, Ball’s creation was designed to cheer up people who worked at, of all places, an insurance company, but it has since become synonymous with the frothy, quintessentially American brand of happiness.īall’s cheery icon never worked its magic on me. That’s when a graphic designer from Worcester, Massachusetts, named Harvey Ball invented the now-ubiquitous grinning yellow graphic. I was born in the Year of the Smiley Face: 1963. That’s exactly what I intended to find out, and the result of this admittedly harebrained experiment is the book you now hold in your hands. What if you lived in a country that was fabulously wealthy and no one paid taxes? What if you lived in a country where failure is an option? What if you lived in a country so democratic that you voted seven times a year? What if you lived in a country where excessive thinking is discouraged? Would you be happy then? Around the world, dozens of what-ifs play themselves out every day. What if, I wondered, I spent a year traveling the globe, seeking out not the world’s well-trodden trouble spots but, rather, its unheralded happy places? Places that possess, in spades, one or more of the ingredients that we consider essential to the hearty stew of happiness: money, pleasure, spirituality, family, and chocolate, among others. They tug at heartstrings and inspire pathos. The truth is that unhappy people, living in profoundly unhappy places, make for good stories. And so, notebook in hand, tape recorder slung over my shoulder, I roamed the world telling the stories of gloomy, unhappy people. Unconsciously, I was observing the first law of writing: Write about what you know. I decided to become a journalist.Īs a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, I traveled to places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia: unhappy places. But how? I had no marketable skills, a stunted sense of morality, and a gloomy disposition. I desperately wanted to see the world, preferably on someone else’s dime. It resurfaced after college with renewed fury. My affliction, if that’s what it is, went into remission for many years following my aborted expedition with Drew.
Danger? Magic? I needed to know, and to this day I’m convinced I would have reached wherever it was I was trying to reach had the Baltimore County Police not concluded, impulsively I thought at the time, that the shoulder of a major thoroughfare was no place for a couple of five-year-olds.
He pleaded with me to turn back, but I insisted we press on, propelled by an irresistible curiosity about what lay ahead.
Not long into our journey, Drew grew nervous. I’ve always believed that happiness is just around the corner. And so, on a late summer afternoon, I dragged my reluctant friend Drew off to explore new worlds and, I hoped, to find some happiness along the way. My bags were packed and my provisions loaded.