Your own personal-- happiness

I really enjoyed this clip.

I agree with much of it, for example, that after a certain level more money plays little role in one's happiness. I also agree, that the American Dream isn't necessarily the formula for success, if that success includes happiness.

That being said, there is much that keeps me from believing that there really is any place "happier" than America.

Why is that? Well, for me, it begins and ends with one word, freedom. I believe that the Danish, are the happiest in Denmark. But I believe that America allows at least the opportunity for anybody and everybody from anywhere to be happy, to be free -- and there is something to be said for that.

The basis upon which I speak is from my own background as a Bangladeshi Muslim American Young Middle-class Woman. I pointed out all these of my personal identities, because it is the freedom that America grants me to express each of these identities safely and freely that would ever allow me to build my happiness. In France, Muslim French Women are banned from donning the "hijab" or head scarf, and in Sweden, minarets are soon to be banned. The injustice behind these propositions bewilders me and makes me wonder not only how unhappy this lack of freedom would make those affected, but for those unaffected directly, how unsettling the thought would be that something so unfounded could happen to your neighbors.

In any case, I plead my case for America, because this country came as a result of the will and the want for religious freedom for Protestants, which has now come to mean freedom in probably the widest realm one could find anywhere in the cosmopolitan world. I'm not sure I agree with the statement as Denmark being the happiest country in the world, as much as it would be more correct to say that the Danish are the happiest people in the world. Though we may plague ourselves every night with the American Dream, at least I go to sleep knowing that here I have the freedom to reject that dream if I wanted, and someone that looked nothing like me and believed in nothing like me could make that dream a reality if he or she wanted-- and that, is what makes me truly happy.