International Day of Happiness 2023
Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia) marked with a group of young people the International Day of Happiness!
At the beginning of the workshop, the participants created a poster on the question: What do we need to be happy? They filled the poster with many words like family, friends, freedom, peace, good food, music, leisure, tolerance, nature, coffee, education and knowledge, hope, and many more.
Then Maika, one of the international volunteers introduced Bhutan, a kingdom in South Asia whose political state principle is happiness. We thought about the question: What would our country of happiness look like? The participants also made a poster for this. They drew the shape of an island, our country of happiness. We thought about the most important rules in this country.
Here are some examples: Freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom of sex, freedom of religion, and equality. We would live in a democracy with free education and free health care. There would be public transport. The most important values would be respect and tolerance, also towards nature.
At first, we thought it would be easy to create such a “perfect” country. But then we saw that it is not so simple. How far may the freedom of the individual go? Is it okay to say racist or homophobic things? How can we ensure equality of wealth? How can we protect nature and at the same time ensure that everyone has enough to eat? All questions that are highly topical.
And how would we measure happiness in our country? Can happiness be measured at all?
The UN tries to do so every year. It produces an annual happiness ranking. We talked about the factors the UN uses to determine its ranking. Do they really determine people’s happiness?
The last question we discussed was: should all states have happiness as the primary goal of their policies? Most participants said yes. But what is happiness? Who defines it?
The workshop was held on the premises of the Youth centre Brčko District.
