These past several weeks I've been out talking up happiness, a rather interesting subject since it encompasses the most basic of human goals.
Our ability to achieve true happiness is influenced by where we live and what we do for a living. As travel industry workers in the U.S., it's hard to assess our happiness level, because America ranks somewhere in the middle when compared with other nations.
The United Nations ranks the world's top 10 nations in terms of happiness on the basis of such factors as health and longevity, knowledge, income and levels of inequality. That last one brings us down. In fact, the U.S. does not place in the top 10 nations in terms of human development and happiness.
Norway, Australia and Sweden are the top three, but we are also behind Germany and Slovenia when it comes to the happiness of our residents. Apparently, true happiness is not directly related to the ability of the population to actually smile.
I like to be up on these ratings of happiness and development because I think it helps sell destinations like Ireland and the Netherlands along with others in the top 10. It is worthwhile, I tell clients, to devote some of your vacation time to seeing places where the people are bright, happy and well-cared for on many levels. It can even be inspiring.
The Irish economy is not in great shape at the moment, but any first-time visitor to the Emerald Isle will be struck by the collective joy that Ireland's residents seem to take in the art of conversation. We all ought to spend time in Ireland, lest we forget what it is like to be in a place where adults converse with their mouths rather than their thumbs.
But what of our happiness here in the States, particularly among those of us who work in the travel profession? Are we under such vocational stress so much of the time that we will never place very high on any happiness scale?
Doesn't it seem that there is a perceived improvement in our collective lot? Is it my imagination, or are many in our profession starting, once again, to enjoy what we do?
In my conversations with my fellow travel consultants, I've been struck by the sudden optimism because folks are traveling again, because interest in the more exotic parts of the world is soaring and because the media have finally come to realize that when you determine to leave your nest and fly, it is better to have a trained professional at your back, a flying wingman to stave off hassles.
Could you have imagined two years ago what they are now writing about our profession? It's as though our entire career is one final episode of "Survivor" and, somehow, we have all managed to win.
The media, from Forbes to the New York Times to USA Today and the "Today" show, are all touting the real value of a travel professional. So I wonder: Is that making us happy? Are we enjoying our work?
We're told that the youngest active travel practitioner in the country is a 53-year-old agent in Tulsa.
We commiserate among ourselves that our know-it-all clients actually take in and digest the suspicious reviews they read on the Internet. They think they know more than we do, they constantly change their minds, they think what we do is easy, they expect us to be at our desks 24/7 and they feel that their little vacation is so rich in commission-generating income that 12 of us ought to be willing to bid for the privilege of helping them out.
So are we really happy?
For the answer to that question, as we do to all questions dealing with the true meaning of life, we turn, once again, to Oprah.
In February last year, while you were busy at work, Oprah had a segment featuring her happiness guru, Dan Buettner, the author of "Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way" (National Geographic Society, 2010).
Buettner's thesis is that personal happiness comes from finding "Blue Zones" in your life. These are places that instill feelings of comfort and satisfaction. It turns out that Blue Zones are not closely related to financial success. The workplace turns out to be one of the major Blue Zones for truly happy people.
Oprah announced some rather startling results of a well-being study by Gallup-Healthways that identified the four happiest jobs in the U.S. based on empirical evidence. Those professions and their rankings were:
1) Special education teacher.
2) Travel agent.
3) Member of the clergy.
4) Firefighter.
This is rather amazing and surely worth pondering. This particular study involved more than half a million participants. We are perceived as having the second-happiest jobs in the nation.
For many of us, planning the significant moments of people's lives enables us to enter one of the largest "Blue Zones" available. Can it be that we are among the truly fortunate without fully appreciating that fact? Can it be that our reality is that we actually enjoy going to work, and we welcome the ringing phone and the personal interaction with human beings who dump the raw ingredients of their vacation on our desks expecting us to create a proper souffle?
It is, of course, interesting to note that not one of these jobs pays as much as $50,000 a year on average. As a side note, there has also been substantial research using lifestyle metrics to determine which state in our country has the happiest residents. Hawaii wins hands down.
I wonder if, somewhere in Hawaii, there is a practicing travel consultant married to a special ed teacher. I hope that person comes forward. I suspect that he or she could teach us a thing or two about life.
Contributing editor Richard Turen owns Churchill and Turen, a vacation-planning firm that has been named to Conde Nast Traveler's list of the World's Top Travel Specialists since the list began. Contact him at rturen@travelweekly.com.