HAPPINESS IS A FILIPINO
I pointed out as much in a recent piece about Pinoys eating and drinking and drinking and eating as a way to dare the fates to do their worst. In fact, if you ask the guys downing gin at the corner store what they are doing, their response will likely be,
With all of the bad news coming out of Manila, like typhoons, runaway inflation and Duterte lawyer Salvador Panelo, I felt a need to inject some happy thoughts into the prevailing atmosphere. So I went through my Happiness File (I have all kinds of files) and found the following gem: Happiness is a Filipino. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philippines is ranked seventh happiest country in the world.
Yes, indeed! The Philippines is just two rungs below Mexico and the United States which are sixth and fifth respectively in the “happiness” rankings.
Wrote K. Davidson, Chronicle science writer, “The ‘happiest place on Earth’ isn’t Disneyland: It’s Denmark.” The Danes scored a 7.96 on a 10-point scale.
Following Denmark are the Netherlands (7.49), Norway (7.45), and Luxembourg (7.30). The U.S. scored 7.29, Mexico garnered 7.18 and the Philippines tallied an impressive 7.03.
Other countries in a list of 21 ranked according to the happiness index are Brazil (6.96), Ireland (6.96), Belgium (6.91), United Kingdom (6.88), Germany (6.59), Spain (6.29), South Africa (6.26), India (6.06), France (5.98), Japan (5.88), South Korea (5.79), Italy (5.78), Portugal (5.58) and Greece (5.54). Yes, Greece was ranked the “unhappiest” of all.
I came upon this news item just when we had guests at home, among them, Edward Kareklas, a full-bloodied Greek who was married to Boots Wilson, a Pinay (I should hasten to point out that Edward has already passed on to a happier place in the Great Beyond).
I asked Edward if the reported unhappiness of his compatriots was due to acting out too many Greek tragedies. Before he could respond, one of our guests quickly suggested that one possible explanation for the high happiness rating of the Filipinos may be likened to the Pinoys’ attitude towards an economic recession. Since most of our people have lived in recessionary circumstances all their lives, an officially declared economic recession makes no difference to them.
I pointed out as much in a recent piece about Pinoys eating and drinking and drinking and eating as a way to dare the fates to do their worst. In fact, if you