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Welcome to www.TheReminder.com archive for past articles!/Opinion/G. Michael Dobbs/In the pursuit of happiness, how would you define the word?
In the pursuit of happiness, how would you define the word?Date: 10/2/2014 Please allow me to ask you, dear reader, a personal question: Are you happy?
I’m sure you will roll an eyeball or two and answer something along the lines of “What do you mean?”
Being “happy” covers a lot of ground. Some people love their families and private life, but hate their jobs. Are they “happy?” Does being “happy” means you walk around with a smile on your face and song in your heart or can a somewhat more reserved or cynical person be “happy?”
I don’t know. I know what makes me “happy.” Finding a topic for this column when I’m cruising on a few hours of sleep makes me practically delirious. High-fiving my nearly two-year-old grandson makes me happy, as does finding movies on Netflix I have always wanted to see. Realizing my wife is still willing to stay with me after 35 years – closing in on 36 – makes me happy, as does my continued employment.
Pharrell Williams earned about a zillion dollars this year with his song “Happy,” although with lyrics such as “Because I’m happy; Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.” I’m not quite sure what happiness is to him.
According to a new study, the happiness of a state can be determined and a person’s happiness can affect their health and well-being.
Wallethub.com has published the results of appears to be a pretty legitimate study on happiness state-by-state. Through polling on a wide variety of factors they ranked the states based on the emotional and physical well being of people, their satisfaction with work and the nature of community, environmental and recreational activities.
The survey is based on quite a bit of research which they cite on the website.
The results are that Utah is the happiest state, followed by Minnesota, North Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Iowa, Hawaii, South Dakota and Idaho.
The unhappiest state is West Virginia, with Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama clustered just above it.
So the Plains and Western states are happier places, generally, and the Deep South isn’t.
And where is the Bay State? Ranked at 16th. We are the happiest state in the Northeast.
Among the various details that make up a state of happiness, the survey noted the lowest prevalence of depression – Hawaii is the winner; the lowest prevalence of inadequate sleep – South Dakota; and the lowest percentage of people overweight or obese was the District of Columbia – yes, I know it’s not a state.
Massachusetts is in the top five of lowest percentage of people overweight or obese, the lowest suicide rate per capita, lowest median weekly hours worked and was ranked number one as the safest state in which to live. Texas, by the way, was ranked as the least safe state.
You can read the full results at wallethub.com/edu/most-least-happy-states-in-america/6959/.
Being happy is obviously part of the American DNA. The Declaration of Independence noted, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
There it is. We are supposed to be allowed to find our happiness – whatever that is.
With all of the complaining I hear and read on almost a daily basis about life in Massachusetts from taxes to the governor to tolls on the Pike to crime in Springfield and Holyoke to people in the suburbs sticking their noses into their neighbors’ business to the non-responsive government in Boston, it’s nice to know that by some description we are “happy.”
If we’re so happy, I wonder what the people in West Virginia complain about.
Agree? Disagree? Drop me a line at news@thereminder.com or at 280 N. Main St., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. As always, this column represents the opinion of its author and not the publishers or advertisers of this newspaper.
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