barreling through the aisles. When we returned home, laden with shopping bags, my cousin darted straight to the computer. She immediately logged into Twitter. “I’m just so happy!” she hooted, and typed: “Black Friday success! #forthewin.”
My cousin wasn’t the only one who broadcasted her delight. I logged
onto Facebook that night to greet numerous statuses boasting grand deals. One of my high school classmates bragged: “Got a buncha cute stuff, hell yeah :) :)!” with fifteen different people “liking” her new investments. Of course, material happiness isn’t new to us. What is new is the way we enhance our happiness by broadcasting it to others. I wasn’t sure if my cousin’s true happiness stemmed from her great deals, or from telling others so she could receive their public praise.
Yet a happy status is simply that: a status—a current standing that
disappears with the passage of time. It can be said that Generation Y has no concept of sustained, long-lasting happiness. Instead, our happiness is statuslike in its brevity. And as soon as it disappears, we run back seeking more. More importantly, our happiness doesn’t stop at the individual level. It encompasses our contentment at a societal level as well. Our Founding Fathers plugged joy into our Declaration of Independence, emphasizing the concept’s communal importance: “…[citizens] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The objective was for each individual to chase after his own happiness, which would heighten the country’s overall wellbeing.
In Bhutan, a small country in the Himalayas, this idea is portrayed
quite literally. The government measures Bhutan’s prosperity in terms of “gross national happiness (GNH).” The country emphasizes psychological wellbeing over economy; arguing that happiness, rather than economic growth, is a better indicator of national success (Arora). To effectively assess happiness, Bhutan implements a series of annual surveys. The surveys ask citizens to rank their degree of happiness on a numerical scale, in areas such Excellence in First-Year Writing 2012 25