In the same boat no longer

Let’s be honest. America is no longer the greatest nation in the world, and it certainly isn’t the happiest. It is usually considered the richest country by gross domestic product, but we all know that money doesn’t buy happiness.

Take Elon Musk, for example. That is one messed-up, ketamine-fired human who wants to colonize Mars. To date, he has sired 14 children by four different women. He built a Texas compound for them to be shielded from, well, the likes of you and me. Does he seem anything like happy to you?

Take any of the American oligarchs for that matter — Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Peter Thiel. Do any of them seem happy? Do happy people delight in inflicting misery on other human beings? Is that how we define American exceptionalism in our 250th year?

No, money doesn’t buy happiness. If you’ve listened to Depression-era members of your family, you may have heard sentences like, “We were poor, but we didn’t know it” or “Everybody was in the same boat.”

Sadly, America has sailed on from the “same boat theory.” Sometimes I wonder if it ever deeply applied. If you look at all the striving and the conquering and the building and the “getting” of America’s past, it often speaks to an “I got mine, you get yours,” mentality. Capitalism tends to work that way.

It also helps to remember that all that striving and conquering was achieved by overtaking someone else’s homeland and exploiting the labor of other human beings.

I would posit that “I got mine, you get yours” has further devolved into “I got mine, eff you.”

We take it on faith that American democracy operates as a gentleman’s agreement where we agree to play by the rules, but everywhere we turn the rules are bent, broken, and mangled on an almost-daily basis.

I don’t know about you, but my faith is broken. Some people get punished; others skate free. Our president, for example, surely possesses America’s most highly oiled pair of skates.

We want a government we can trust, and wouldn’t it be great if we could trust each other again?

Dream on, you say? Maybe so, but in Finland, which is consistently ranked as one of the happiest countries, corruption is low. People trust each other and their government. I repeat: People trust their government. What must that be like?

Perhaps some of us remember. I grew up in an era of progress and a fair bit of optimism. I had few worries and had all that I needed. Yet somewhere in my youth I began to wonder: What’s holding this way of life together? No one can guarantee that this will last.

I never dared to voice these thoughts. My parents would have waved them away as unfounded and silly. They still trusted and believed in the system, but deep in my gut, it did not seem self-evident that all would be well in my lifetime.

The Declaration of Independence proclaims the pursuit of happiness as our right, but this is a curious assertion if you think about it. If you’ve ever set out to pursue happiness, you know that it seldom turns out to be something you can capture.

For their part, the Finns were surprised at being named the happiest people on earth. Finnish writer Frank Martela says Finns do not see themselves as “happy.” They asked to see the data on which this supposition was based.

Turns out, Finnish folk see themselves as content more so than happy. Life is good in Finland. Besides the high degrees of trust in their government, there are strong social supports like universal healthcare and free higher education, very little income disparity and therefore, very low rates of poverty. This is the “same boat theory” in living color.

Along with other Nordic countries, Finns believe that enjoying life is as important as working. In other words, people should be able to earn a living wage but also have time to be with their families, to enjoy nature, and to pursue interests in their spare time.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? This, dear reader, is how happiness may find one in the end. Not in relentless pursuit, but in a sort of sideways amble.

We’ll be voting in a few months. We’ll never be Finland, of course, but it’s an ideal we can keep in mind as we listen to candidates and head to the polls. May you live long enough to see contentment sidle up to you, unbidden, like a curious puppy. May it lope over and nudge you with a wet nose of greeting and an open heart. “Hey, there. Hi. May I stay awhile?”

Joan Zwagerman wonders why some people are so threatened by good things for everyone like Medicare for All.