This is in reaction to the article “The ‘Happiest People on Earth’” (Opinion, 9/30/14). I found this article quite interesting having just visited my grandparents in the Philippines last summer.
I am a senior student at Cornell University in New York and an exchange student in the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
I think it’s really interesting to compare the ways in which Denmark and the Philippines are considered to be happy nations. My first thought is that it isn’t easy to measure happiness. In fact, I think the majority of the criteria that the author pointed to (e.g., lack of traffic, financial security) contribute more directly toward “comfortableness” rather than happiness.
Western cultures tend to conflate the two ideas, but the Philippines seems to be a really good example of a country where people do not need to have such a high degree of security to be really, genuinely happy with their lives. Perhaps the things that truly make Scandinavia a happy place are the ideas of “hygge” and being neighborly; and insofar as these ideas are also present in Filipino culture (albeit under different names), perhaps the Philippines should have been on that list of “happiest” countries.
—BRIAN ROXAS,
senior student, Cornell University,
Ithaca, New York, New York,
14853 USA