The Happiest Man in America

While you can never tell if a person is happy just by looking at him or her, there are some reliable statistical predictors of happiness: According to Gallup, men tend to be happier than women, wealthier people tend to be happier than people with less money, and people with kids tend to be happier than people without.

What happens if you mash together lots of these positive predictors of happiness? When The New York Times did and threw in some sleuthwork, it got Alvin Wong, “a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year.”

NYT:

Meet Alvin Wong. He is a 5-foot-10, 69-year-old, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew, who’s married with children and lives in Honolulu. He runs his own health care management business and earns more than $120,000 a year.

…

Mr. Wong said that he was indeed a very happy person. He said that perhaps he manages to be the happiest man in America because “my life philosophy is, if you can’t laugh at yourself, life is going to be pretty terrible for you.”

(NYT via Neatorama)

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Robert Quigley