If you want to go to that happy place...

[Frank]

(July 5) - Forget Disneyland! Costa Rica is the happiest place in the world, according to an independent research group in Britain. In a report released Saturday, the group ranks nations using the "Happy Planet Index," which seeks countries with the most content people (the index measures well-being in terms of long, happy and meaningful lives. But it also studies what matters to the planet - our rate of resource consumption).

1. Costa Rica
2. Dominican Republic
3. Jamaica
4. Guatemala
5. Vietnam
6. Colombia
7. Cuba
8. El Salvador
9. Brazil
10. Honduras

(United States Makes List at 114th Spot)

[Paul_36]

The subject of Costa Rica seems to keep coming up lately in my life... a friend of mine is picking up and moving there in the next month because he LOVES it down there. I am thinking of making a trek down there in January to see for myself ... I've heard nothing but amazing things about CR..

[First Feather]

I dunno...not sure you can measure happiness or how but I did spend 2 mos. in Costa Rica about 10 years ago. I would also say, go before it's gone...and I did notice a contentment there. I thought about it the whole time I was there..One of the things I noticed was that on the weekends when I and my partner went dancing...whole families would file into and onto the dance floor....grandmas, toddlers, adults, teens. There is something that holds families closer together there.

Life seems slower and easier there. I also noticed that wherever I saw Costa Ricans at play, it was the whole family. I don't know how many peoples living rooms I ate in...People just open up their houses, put tables and chairs around and there ya go. There were things I didn't particularly care for while I was there but for the most part, I'd say it was a relaxed, contented, happy, bubbly place...and there is one other thing I noticed...not a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots...?

I bought the place I'm currently living in because the land spoke to me...

[Frank]

Btw, Gww, loved your description of Central TX. Very funny, in a sad kind of way.

[Frank]

I don't know what to make of this list except to say that apparently the pace of life doesn't equate with one's happiness.

In the hope of finding a YouTube clip from "In The Pursuit of Happyness" that depicted Chris Gardner, who never knew his real father, who had a mother who repeatedly went to jail and a crazed, abusive stepfather who kept reminding him he wasn't his father and tossed him out on Christmas day. He decided early on that he will always be in his children's lifes. That was the message I was trying to find. But all the movie clips pursued the story of rags to riches. Even one showing the ending, the sweet, touching moment when he secured a good life for his boy and they're walking away together, his son sharing "knock, knock" jokes. To me, that's the real message. That the real happiness. And then a caption shows on the center of the screen how Chris went on to have his own firm and to become a millionaire. NO! Wrong message!! But of course, that what our painbodies want to see. There were two messages from that movie and most people fell for Hollywood's and so the movie perhaps should have been named, "In Pursuit of the American Dream" because, obviously from the the truth of study (above), tells us that the American dream doesn't equate with happiness.

I did find this two part video of an interview with Chris Garnder for 20/20 where the real truth comes out. Here, Chris says there's a dark side to living in America and he's been there and he prefers "this side" (the happy side). I suppose, in support of Paul's comment, we could expand that and say, there's a dark side to living on this planet and I prefer the Costa Rica side. :)

Struggle to be happy in America (1)

The ending is priceless... (2)