Maunderlust

According to the New York Times, the Danes are happy.

What’s up with that? Well, turns out they have low expectations, so every good thing that happens is a pleasant surprise.

(More after the jump.)

This reminded me of a teacher I had in high school. He was one of those people who could make content come alive in a really dynamic way for a bunch of people who couldn’t care less about it.

He used techniques from popular culture to hold his students’ attention. But not in some cloying buddy-buddy way. No, he was a gifted showman who knew how to work a room.

Part of his bag of tricks was the television metaphor. He’d pepper his lectures with previews and coming attractions of the salacious tidbits from upcoming lessons. (It took the better part of a semester to build up to Catherine the Great). He would break in with commercials from time to time. And, before each break we would have holiday specials.

Specials ran the gamut from drug combinations that had famously killed people (teaching you what not to mix), the exploits of the bad popes, and the secrets of life.

One such secret was The Secret of Happiness. And here it is:

Expectations.

How Danish.

Yeah, it’s sort of dime store wisdom. But now its been proven by the great Danes, so it’s a scientifcal fact.

Here’s how he explained it to us:

There’s these two kids. One’s pretty well-off, goes to private school, well educated, from a family where all the kids are expected to go to a prestigious college.

Then there’s this other kid. From, shall we say, a different part of town. He’s smart, but no one in his family has ever gone to college, and they aren’t expecting that he will either.

Both kids apply to the same set of colleges. One is a safe bet for both of them. The rest, stretches.

Both are rejected from the stretch schools – the more prestigious ones – for various reasons.

Both are offered a scholarship to the safe school. It’s solid, but nothing remarkable. Nothing you’d wear on a sweatshirt to make other people feel bad about their kids.

At one house there’s disappointment, frustration, and anger.

At the other there’s a celebration – happiness.

It’s the same set of circumstances for both kids. The difference is the expectation.

Now the trick, and there is a trick, is that you can’t fool yourself. You can’t force the bar down artificially to make yourself feel better when you sail over it.

So you’ve got to expect the reasonable worst while striving for the best. And if you do that, more often than not you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised when the worst passes you by. And… so the secret goes, you’ll be happy.
[tags]Denmark, Happiness, Secrets, Catherine the Great[/tags]