There’s a World Happiness Ranking of countries with the happiest people on Earth that’s published every year, but which somehow only seems to place in the Top Ten mainly rich countries where people have everything taken care of by the state that others elsewhere don’t, leaving them with little to worry about.
Happiness in those mainly European nations is measured mainly by the absence of the socio-economic problems that face the majority of the world’s people living in developing nations and by citizens’ ability to enjoy life without the daily worries that normally eventually take and break lives and affect families everywhere else.
Happiness for (most of) Humanity is not the absence of everyday problems, but the ability to survive those still faced daily.
To Caribbean families, Happiness is defined more by ‘Having a Good Time’ than by being satisfied that one can see better beyond tomorrow and/or the day after, how they contain their unhappiness by masking it with brave smiles that only shine on faces while hearts throb unhappily, in silent loneliness.
Caribbean people still largely live in a shrinking bubble of imagined isolation from everything seen happening elsewhere on TV daily.
Until world events hit home hard – like with current rising prices for everything as a result of the current international energy crisis from the Gulf War — Happiness is largely defined by most Caribbean people more by ‘Having a Good Time’ than knowing or caring what tomorrow will bring.
While the region’s government have to walk tightropes over broken glass bottles between efforts to save income-earning programs they were forced to depend on after traditional donors tied their purse strings and the US is sealing its borders and cleansing itself through selective application of discriminatory immigration policies — and with the European union (EU) also raising its drawbridges and shifting immigration policy goalposts to keep targeted Caribbean citizens out, most regional citizens continue to redefine their lives.
But people across this region do not differ much in how they define Happiness.
Historical attitudes to Carnival and Cricket and current participation in the many public and online activities have redefined seasonal approaches to new forms of Caribbean entertainment, including sports, music and cultural performances, boat rides and sky rides, even e-Sports and other forms of online entertainment.
Every month features either Carnival, Sports and other forms of entertainment in different Caribbean nations – all are still (as per usual) well-patronized and increasingly by the Caribbean Diaspora.
Irrespective of pricing, each Caribbean party everywhere is usually followed by the same question ‘Where’s the next one?’
Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred has, like Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, powered the Caribbean to the top of Olympic Athleticism; the West Indies team has won another rare world cup; Haiti and Curacao flew the regions flags in different ways at the FIFA World Cup; there’s always an IPL (Indian) or CPL (Caribbean) super-league cricket tournament somewhere in the region; Grand Prix racing is entering Guyana; and the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) confidently floats into its 4th decade.
High-powered fundraising music and culture festivals have been rolling across Jamaica since Hurricane Melissa closed 2025 for the island, involving international artistes volunteering to keep homeless, displaced and relocated disaster victims happy.
Barbados is ever-bubbling with music and culture, as do Dominica and Saint Lucia with their Creole Music and International Jazz Festivals, alongside the numerous monthly other national cultural festivals that dot the Caribbean skyline — from Cuba, Bahamas and Belize, Haiti, Jamaica, Surinam and Venezuela, through the Windward and Leeward Islands, across the OECS (Organization of Eastern Caribbean States) and the many European and American colonies by different names that still exist in the wider Eastern Caribbean – like the Dutch ‘Antilles’ and French ‘Overseas Departments’, Bermuda, Turks & Caicos, Cayman, British and US Virgin Islands,
The attractive distractions ought not to be totally dismissed, if only, as the sense of happiness they provide, even temporary, takes their minds off thinking of how-fast to beat The System to pay the bills they accumulated for the Good Time and the government taxes necessary to provide the free health and other social services they’ve become accustomed to, expecting without end.
But how to really measure Happiness, Caribbean Style?
First, Happiness is neither style, nor fashion, so it must be seen and treated as a wholesome accumulation of the material and spiritual things and thoughts that make one smile – from being able to pay bills and putting food on the table, to caring better for children and students, not overly fearing for crime and being respected for who – and not what – you are.
However-measured, though, Caribbean people have one common denominator in measuring happiness: most feel that just as ‘Life is What You Make It!’, ‘Happiness is Whatever Keeps You Smiling!’.
Definitions will differ, but interpretations will infer that what makes Caribbean people happy is no different than anywhere else, except that some adopted adaptations will always survive generations: like what makes us smile, laugh and Feel Good.
Economists and social scientists will use today’s increasingly changing yardsticks to measure social being, like with international imperial financial and commercial entities imperiously categorizing developing nations by fluctuating GDP numbers, instead of how happy their policies make people feel after lifetimes of foreign aid suddenly stop flowing.
The late great communicator Willie James nationalised the phrase ‘This is St. Lucia, where we are happy!’.
That was during the transition from colonialism to statehood and independence, but, approaching five decades later, Saint Lucia has redefined the Entertainment aspect of making people happy and has branded itself as the Eastern Caribbean’s ‘Entertainment Capital’, successfully investing in and monetizing music, sports and culture, with remarkable win-win rewards.
And whether they know of Willie or not, the average young citizen will also easily agree with any other who may say this is also a nation where many simply make themselves happy by majoring in minor matters!