The Pursuit of Happiness

If you ever travelled to Europe in the summer you might have noticed a foreign attitude among the locals. Well, yes -- this is Europe and it should feel foreign to Americans but there is something else. There is a relaxed attitude. I noticed it most in Italy. When I travel abroad I prefer to spend five or six days in a single place. I'll take day trips but I won't travel around the countryside much. By staying in one spot you get to merge into the rhythm of a place and see how local people spend the day. I was sitting in a piazza in an Umbrian hill town having coffee and a tourist bus full of Americans arrived. They all piled out of the bus and sprinted down the street to eyeball the local church and an eleventh century fountain. They were shepherded by a tour guide who was Italian and may have been the only real connection to the people of Italy for that day. I saw them later racing back to the bus. Some of them has acquired small parcels in the local shops to forever remind them of their trip to the hill towns of Umbria. Those Americans had managed to turn a vacation into work.

There was an odd feeling of freedom in the air in Italy and I've found it in other places as well. A  social or cultural freedom. The day begins and the day ends. If you don't get everything done today then tomorrow is another day. People go home for lunch. It is not uncommon for folks to take a month-long vacation. It is absolutely okay to have a five course meal starting at 9 PM. 

This attitude is almost unknown in the US. I blame the Puritans. We would feel guilty taking a month-long vacation (even if we somehow earned that much time) and our employer and our coworkers would make sure we felt bad about it. The Puritan work ethic is almost a genetic building block of life here in the US. We are expected to feel guilty if we do anything that isn't deemed productive. We must always be busy improving or producing something. That's one reason why there is such a bad attitude toward people who need some form of government assistance. Retirees feel bad about collecting social security because it is sometimes perceived as being on "the dole". Some new retirees have a difficult transition because they feel bad about not working. They make lists of things they need to do and race through the list so they can make another list. I was one of those retirees. I made a list that would take me through the first year. I completed it all in ninety days and then went out and got a part-time job.

I often travel by Amtrak or take long solo road trips. I frequently run into tourists from Europe or, most recently, Australia. The folks on Amtrak are most interesting because it is a slow way to travel and because they interact with other American travelers. When an American asks where they have been or where they are going you can see the shock on their face as the foreign tourist lays out their vacation plan.  One family said they were taking a circle tour of the US by Amtrak starting in Los Angeles and heading to the east coast and then up to Boston and then a side trip to Montreal and then finally back to California.  If you drive interstates 40 or 44 you may encounter Europeans tracing the entire course of Historic Route 66 in rented vans or small campers. Sometimes they rent Harleys and make the trip. Sometimes they are lost and have to ask directions but they are doing it...usually on their own armed with a guidebook. They see more of the country than most Americans ever will. My recently-met Australian went from Australia to Brazil to see the Aussies play in the World Cup and then went on to the US where he was going to spend some time in Las Vegas, where I met him, and then head on to California before going home. The tremendous weight of self-guilt would keep most Americans from enjoying an extended trip. Lots of Americans grudgingly take their vacation time and sit at home because otherwise they might lose the time.

Americans sometimes like to complain and carry on about the socialist tendencies of European societies. Maybe there are some excesses but I can't help but think that we feel a need to pass judgment on those systems for a socialized safety net. It's un-American! Good Heavens...they have socialized medicine!! Poor folks, they must be slackers,  are living off the government or have some kind of tax-based subsidy!! Whatever happened to their devotion to hard work, duty, thrift, self-discipline, and responsibility, we ask. Being judgmental is one of the key components of the Puritan ethic system.  What on earth was Jefferson thinking when he listed "...the pursuit of happiness" as one of our inalienable rights?