On BBC World a few months back there was an interesting series about happiness and how it can be assessed. Unfortunately I did not manage to see the whole series, but I did like the idea of using happiness as a way of measuring of how well things are going in the world. It may seem simplistic, but it could well be highly accurate.
It would be interesting to carry out a survey country by country of the levels of happiness that exist. I think this would be a good measure of the performance of politicians too, after all, if you are happy with those leading you, you will be happy to keep them there.
The trouble is measuring levels of happiness. I suppose there are various questions that could be asked, such as ‘On a scale of 1 to 5, how happy are you?’ – with five being the highest and one being the lowest level of happiness, or sadness, depending on which way you look at it. Then you could ask ‘How happy are you with the politicians currently in power?’, again on a scale of 1 to 5, and, perhaps more telling, ‘How happy are you with the other political parties who are not in power at the moment?’. The, other questions could be asked to about personal and work circumstances, and the end results could be averaged, statistically analysed, by those who like this sort of thing, all with the scope of arriving at a ‘happiness’ factor or ‘feel-good’ factor.
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
How about testing this out? How happy are you, my good readers, on a scale of 1 to 5? Answers on a comment, and mention, if you like:
- where you live, country and place
- your age
- whether you live in a town or a city
Try to be as honest as you can.
I’ll kick off, my happiness level is around three at the moment. I live in Milan, Italy. I’m 42 and I live in a city.
