Happiness Is A Place?

Maria Popova reviews Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World:

Our tendency to conflate geography and happiness seems to be more deeply embedded in our thinking and even our language than we realize. We speak about “looking for” happiness and “finding” joy as though these were specific locations on an actual map. Until the 18th century, people even believed the Garden of Eden, the biblical notion of paradise, was a real place, so they depicted in on maps — located, as Weiner notes the irony, at the intersection of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where modern-day Iraq lies. At the same time, the entire self-help industry is built — and billed — on the premise that happiness is inside us and we simply need to dig it out. But, Weiner argues, both of these notions are wrong — the line between “out there” and “in here” is much finer than we’ve been led to believe and, as he puts it, where we are is vital to who we are.