"What is the happiest moment of your life?" A cross-cultural exploration

[sue_frantz]

“What is the happiest moment of your life?” This is the question Michael Zervos asks people as he travels around the globe (Corbley, 2024).

Start by covering the PERMA model of well-being which says that our happiness derives from positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement/accomplishment. If you’re not familiar with the model, this page at positivepsychology.com provides a nice overview.  

For this activity, ask your students Zervos’s question: What is the happiest moment of your life? Give students a few minutes to think about their answer. Begin by sharing your answer. Ask students which components of the PERMA model are relevant to your happiest moment. For example, if it was receiving an award, then positive emotion (which should be present in all answers), meaning (if the award underscored your purpose and worth), and achievement/accomplishment (it’s an award!).

Next, ask your students to gather in small groups to share their happiest moments and discuss which aspects of the PERMA model are relevant to each person’s happiest moment.

To conclude this part of the activity, ask a volunteer from each group to share their happiest moment with the class and its related PERMA model components.

Either continuing the small group discussions or as a written assignment, ask students to visit Michael Zervos’s “The Project Kosmos” Instagram site. For each country Zervos has visited, the first video is a country overview, and then he has two videos where he has asked an individual to share the happiest moment of their lives. Students are to select five videos, each from a different country. They should have a mix of locations, ages, and gender. For each video, identify the country, briefly describe the person’s happiest moment, and then identify the related components of the PERMA model.

For example, Mehdi in Tunisia. His happiest moment was when his YouTube channel reached 100,000 subscribers earning him a YouTube silver trophy. His moment speaks to positive emotions, meaning, achievement/accomplishment, and maybe even engagement.

The happiest moment for Fatou in Mauritania was marrying her husband. It seems to have been an arranged marriage and her relief that he and his family were nice and welcoming is almost palpable. Her moment speaks to positive emotions, relationships, and perhaps achievement/accomplishment.

To conclude this activity, ask students to identify any big themes that they noticed. In terms of what makes us happy, are we all more alike than we are different?

Reference

Corbley, A. (2024, September 23). He travels to share the happiest moments in people’s lives from every country in the world. Good News Network. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/he-travels-to-share-the-happiest-moments-in-peoples-lives-from-every...