A felicidade é sempre uma medida relativa

Esta manhã, alguém no Twitter chamava a atenção para a tendência dos comediantes bem sucedidos sofrerem períodos de forte depressão pessoal.
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Lembrei-me logo desta figura:

"More interesting still, development is generally clustered by region. But in terms of happiness, it runs the gamut from gloomy to chirpy within the same income group. And regional stereotypes reveal themselves: people in far eastern Europe and central Asia are dour despite having reasonable living standards, while those in Latin America at the same level of development tend to be cheery—around 20 basis points higher.
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In the chart above, rolling over the data points reveals information; clicking on regions in the key focuses on certain areas. This unveils interesting outliers. People in Myanmar are as happy as those in Hong Kong who have much higher living standards. Depressingly, Haitians are unlike their Caribbean neighbors and resemble sub-Saharan African countries"

 E de uma teoria que Malcom Gladwell defende em "David & Golias":

"Which do you think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all? Answer: the so-called happy countries.
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If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don’t feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face?
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We compare ourselves to those in the same situation as ourselves
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Citizens of happy countries have higher suicide rates than citizens of unhappy countries, because they look at the smiling faces around them and the contrast is too great."

Presumo que um comediante bem sucedido está habituado a ver pessoas que, quando estão consigo, demonstram exteriormente alegria, e boa disposição. Algures, é natural que o comediante se comece a interrogar porque é que ele é tão diferente dos outros.