By Simon Gonzalez
Good news, New Hanover County. Two of the 10 happiest places to live in North Carolina are right here.
That’s according to the lovely folks at zippia.com, a careers website. They “analyzed over 143 places in North Carolina to determine where it’s all rainbows and sunshine.” New Hanover County’s unincorporated Myrtle Grove came in at No. 8, and the community of Porters Neck No. 10.
The search for happiness is common to all of us and eclipses even our job and career search, their website says. As a service to their readers, Zippia “took a dive into the most recent census data to help you identify which places in North Carolina have the biggest smile of them all.”
The criteria: Being well educated (population with at least a bachelor’s degree); having a job (as measured by the unemployment rate); a short commute to work (people hate traffic); low cost of living; having a family (getting, and staying, married has a ton of happiness benefits, on average); owning a home (that’s a big plus); and the poverty rate (money definitely helps out).
The numbers say that about 80 percent of the 9,030 people living in Myrtle Grove own their home, and 60 percent are married. At Porters Neck, 67.5 percent of the 6,476 people own their home, and 74 percent are married.
Personally, the survey is great news. I now know that I am deliriously happy!
I’m a Myrtle Grove resident with a college degree and a job. The commute is relatively short; although it’s probably best we don’t talk about the traffic. Low cost of living? Sure, as long as gas prices remain low and it’s possible to avoid the government’s health care exchanges. My wife and I are closing in on our 30th anniversary. We own our home. Thankfully, we are well above the poverty rate.
All those things contribute to my wellbeing, to be sure. Homeownership beats homelessness. A job and accompanying paycheck trumps unemployment. They certainly help provide a sense of security.
But do wellbeing and security add up to happiness? Is it harder for single people who rent, don’t have a college education, live in Shallotte and commute to work across the bridge, and who can’t afford to drive through Starbucks for a soy chai tea latte on their way to work to be happy?
I don’t disagree with the contention that the search for happiness is common to us all. But I would suggest that they are using the wrong measuring stick, one that is too focused on wealth.
I’ll never forget a trip I once made to a village high atop a mountain in Honduras. There were no roads. The only way to get there was to either walk, or to ride horses. Correct that, mules. Underfed mules. Mine clearly wasn’t used to hauling overfed, oversized Americans. After almost killing it on the way up, I opted to walk back down.
There was a boy in the village happily playing with a toy car, “driving” it on dirt roads. He was experiencing the joy of playing and having a great time. I thought about my son. In order to make him happy, we usually fulfilled his video game wish list at Christmas and on birthdays. This boy didn’t have the latest video game, but he didn’t know he didn’t have the latest video game.
No doubt, life wasn’t easy in the village. They didn’t have a lot of things we take for granted. Their livelihood depended on growing crops. A poor season could mean disaster. But if you asked them if they were happy, the majority would have said yes.
In our affluent American culture, we tend to think the secret to happiness is to get more, or to obtain something we don’t have. I’d be happy if only I had a nicer car, a bigger house, a better job, a relationship — fill in the blank. But when we get it, we find it really doesn’t make us happy.
We also tend to be jealous of those who have what we don’t. More than three-fourths of the respondents in a recent University of California San Diego study said they experienced envy in the last year.
Instead of searching for happiness, perhaps we should be looking for contentment.
A very wise man once wrote, “I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.”
The kind of contentment Paul wrote about in the book of Romans isn’t dependent on education, homeownership, commute times, or job status.
Now that’s something worth searching for.
