Are you happy? The answer may be some version of ‘yes’. After all, there are a lot of things to be happy about, such as feeling well, warm, and fed, when that happens. Smiling at or with someone.
Defining ‘happy’ is not something I intend to do here, it is up to you to decide what the term means. For you.
I harbour the suspicion however that many of us are not always happy, and for many reasons. After all, we exist alongside a domineering monkey mind, more unsettled when bombarded by current (and online) narratives of catastrophe. (Wars and national leaders, etc.)
As the Buddha said, life is suffering. But maybe as you read this, you are suffering not so much.
Considering community, are we, or aren’t we happy? To assuage my tormented curiosity, nearly 18 years ago I started a happiness survey. This year I updated the effort for some comparison - when time and situations change, do peoples’ contentment change as well?
Why not take a moment and ask yourself, and those nearby, to consider, guided by the following query. This is not an academic study, just a pulse check.
I asked five simple questions in three different times and locations to a variety of different individuals. First in a small American town in 2008, second in a small New Zealand town in 2008, and third in a small New Zealand town in 2025. Yes, evaluating a 17 year gap.
For the first four, answer on a scale of one (a little) to ten (lots); for the fifth jot down whatever comes to mind:
How happy are you?
How much stress do you have?
How much do you feel you are able to control your situation?
How glad are you to live where you do now?
What is the biggest issue for you right now?
My methodology was simple: holding a jar filled with candy in the US (Abba-Zabas and Starburst) and lollies in New Zealand (Fruit Bursts and Minties), I approached some people walking in public spaces near to downtown and asked if they’d please answer five questions. In exchange for a wrapped sweet.
More than 100 people agreed to unwrap a sweet and fill out my form.
I’m already curious how your answers compare with the responses others offered up.
Here are the results:
Averages
From a scale of 1 (a little) to 10 (lots)
How happy are you?
USA, 2008 8
New Zealand, 2008 7
New Zealand, 2025 9
How much stress do you have?
USA, 2008 5
New Zealand, 2008 4
New Zealand, 2025 6
How much do you feel you are able to control your situation?
USA, 2008 7
New Zealand, 2008 7
New Zealand, 2025 7
How glad are you to live where you do now?
USA, 2008 8
New Zealand, 2008 7
New Zealand, 2025 8
Survey results invite speculation, so have at it. In 2008 New Zealanders were less happy than Americans. Now they are even more happy. Is that a Covid thing?
Interesting how happiness scores equally sit three points above the stress levels. Does stress make us feel alive thus active thus successful thus happy?
What about the blazing sevens, consistently indicating we feel mostly in control of our situations, but not entirely. Is that just the way it is on this mortal coil, no matter the time or the place?
Acknowledging that people ‘feel’ different moment to moment, opinions are by nature somewhat nebulous. Thus, might there be an unintended link between being happy and eating candy?
Alas, don’t we wonder what the results would be for a USA survey in 2025. Any guesses?
For the last question, What is the biggest issue for you right now?, USA participants mostly said health and money. New Zealanders in 2008 said work-related issues, and in 2025, cost of living and health.
Here are three direct responses to that last question that beget some compassion:
USA 2008
Playing the Walton Five Bagatelles
Being a senior
World affairs
New Zealand 2008
Muppets I work with
Meghan saying yes
World weather patterns
New Zealand 2025
My husband with dementia
Working abroad without my family
What’s for lunch (not a stand-alone response)
My reflective process tells me that next time I should include a sixth question:
6. What will you do to increase your happiness score?
Beyond the survey results, allow me to present and promote a little current happiness tracking. On Substack there are heaps of pages pertaining to ‘happy’, such as with the prefix ‘in pursuit of’ or ‘Japan’. Or the suffix ‘habits’, ‘investing’ or ‘challenge’.
As I dug, I happily landed on the post ‘Friday Night Beers’ and found out some really cool stuff, like the journalist, author and Substacker Michael Donaldson is in Auckland, New Zealand. He informs readers about delicious 8 Wired’s annual Wild Feijoa Sour Ale, or the recent New Zealand hop variety making a bang called ‘Superdelic’.
Michael writes slinky words that would make (nearly) anyone happy: “I reckon if you live in Auckland, get along this weekend to Twofold and try the fresh hop iteration of their Tuesday Pils…and there’s candy floss.” Sweet!
Oops, Michael’s post is actually In Pursuit of Hoppiness. I was tricked! Hoppily.
Some helpful, wider-reaching research circa 2019 can be found in Hans and Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund’s book, Factfulness. In it the authors detail how our human mind gets caught in its own web and confuses reality. It is good to know, as the authors also show how extreme poverty almost halved in 20 years.
Whatever your thoughts, keep in mind, on a scale of 1-10 this year in New Zealand the average happiness score is a 9. According to this lolly-pushing pundit at least.
On average, with sympathy for the deep despair that effects many of us, my hope is we can taste some sweetness in life too.
