As a longtime member of the Quality Paperback Book Club (QPB), I tend to reject most of its featured selections and scroll to those that I feel drawn to – psychic selection, so to speak. In most instances the choice is solid, especially since there is usually a corroborating “reader review.”  Not so in the case of Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss. I just liked the title and, more so, the subtitle  “One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.”

Among other things, Weiner is a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio; he talks with you as opposed to writing at you, editorializing, commenting. The book simultaneously makes you laugh and makes you think…about your own Happiness Quotient – HQ. (The World Database of Happiness is located in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in case you want to launch your own study.)

This is the kind of book that you will hand to a friend and exclaim, “You HAVE to read this!” And, then, snatch it back and mumble, “Uh, get your own copy.”

The book, however, is not The Thing…it’s happiness.  I’ve been thinking A LOT about happiness lately. Those of us who have danced to the other side of age 50, I believe, have a more acute awareness of the necessity of being happy in our daily lives, with the people who make up our life, and with the view down the road ahead.  Having spent a majority of our life making other people happy (read parents, siblings, teachers, partners, spouses, kids, employers, The Supreme Being and his/her representatives), we too often think that our happiness is solely contingent upon that of another.  The concept of making oneself happy first seems, at best, selfish.  Cluttering our days with the stuff of life, we rarely ask if what we are doing, being, etc., is, in fact, making us happy.  The irony is that if we are first happy within our Self, that feeling will be transmuted to those around you.  Picture yourself walking down the street…sparkling!  People will notice and smile back!

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, “Am I happy?”  What makes me happy today?

Forget the esoteric “What is happiness?”  Even Weiner learned that the state of bliss couldn’t be quantified.  Happiness can change moment to moment.  The key is being aware of the feeling and allowing the Self-ish celebration!

Today on a scale of 1 to 10, I am a 7: working from my home computer; dogs at the dog spa, so no insistent yapping; second cup of coffee; two unsolicited e-mails from the SSO (semi-significant other).

Of course, it’s only 8 a.m.  What’s your HQ?