I once had a penpal from Finland. His name was Jukka Touvinen. He wrote to me about snow and ice, I told him about sun and sand. That correspondence sustained me until I reached my teens when I overcame my shyness to communicate with real boys and I supposed the same thing happened to Jukka, when he discovered real girls.
I always dreamt of Finland. His descriptions of it stayed with me – its long days of summer and dark days of winter – and so this week, when I got an email from Visit Finland, asking me if I was “ready to find my inner Finn”, I immediately leapt from my remote-work chair.
The email told me that Visit Finland is “looking for participants from around the world to master in happiness. The new Masterclass of Happiness will offer 10 lucky participants in-person coaching on how to discover their inner happiness through bonding with nature. Applications to the four-day masterclass, held in Finnish Lakeland in June 2023, are now open.”
Voted the world’s happiest country for five years running by the World Happiness Report in 2022, it wants to share its secret happiness skills with the world by creating a masterclass that will “bring together the lucky participants and expert coaches who will guide them towards a balanced way of life that helps you be happy the Finnish way”.
The coaching covers four key themes: nature and lifestyle, health and balance, design and everyday, and food and wellbeing.
Who can resist such a calling? And by the way, what a masterstroke in marketing from Visit Finland, right?
I suspect it will receive a lot of applicants from Asia Pacific because other than New Zealand, which crept in at 10th position and Australia in 12th, not one country from our region appeared in the top 24. The top nine slots were occupied by countries with, coincidentally, lots of snow and ice – after Finland, came Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway and Israel.
I wonder whether weather has anything to do with it. According to the Oracle Happiness Report of 2022, 44% of APAC respondents said they have not felt true happiness for more than two years and 25% don’t know, or have forgotten, what it means to feel truly happy.
Anyway, with this masterclass on happiness, Finland has stolen the march on Bhutan who everyone knows is the only country that lives by a Gross National Happiness index.
And incidentally, when I read up the history of the World Happiness Report, which marks its 10th anniversary this year, well, it came into being, thanks to Bhutan, which sponsored a resolution at the United Nations in 2011, asking governments to “give more importance to happiness and well-being in determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development”.
Having been to both countries, I cannot say which country is happier.
I visited Helsinki once in November, so it was pretty dark most of the time and I remember a conversation with my driver about happiness – he didn’t sound too happy about a lot of things but then I found out he was a Swede, who’d moved to Finland. He did tell me that Finnish has the second hardest language in the world to learn, after Mandarin and I did learn the Finnish word for happiness – “onnellisuus”.
In Bhutan, I remember being told by our guide, “Happiness is within you. Some people think they’ll be happy if they move somewhere else but if you’re not happy in Singapore, then you won’t be happy in Bhutan or anywhere else.”
Nevertheless, I believe the happiest country in the world right now is Malaysia since Ipoh-born Michelle Yeoh and her cast from “Everything, Everywhere All At Once” swept the Oscars, making her the first Malaysian actor to win the Oscar. I particularly liked the moment when she said that her family was in KL (which was auto-spelt Chao in the subtitles of the video) watching, and that she’d be home soon to celebrate with them. What a moment for women of age everywhere, Asian, Finnish or otherwise.
Anyway, commenting on the happiness masterclass, Heli Jimenez, senior director, international marketing at Business Finland, said, “A question we often get is: ‘How are you so happy?’ We believe Finnish happiness stems from a close relationship with nature and our down-to-earth lifestyle: it’s not some mystical state, but a skill that can be learned and shared.”
So what are you waiting for? Apply for a seat at the happiness table at www.findyourinnerfinn.com
Me, I hope I find my inner Jukka or, maybe, Michelle.
