Happiness

According to a new study, Mexico is the happiest country on the Earth, and its citizens have the highest level of life satisfaction on the planet. Mexico tends to be all over the map on this sort of study, and if you'll indulge a little pop psychology, I think it stems from a distinct dichotomy in the typical Mexican outlook: lots of immediate pessimism (which tends to express itself in low levels of trust in the government, very little confidence in the economy, and in perennially negative right-track, wrong-track numbers), countered by an equal amount of broad contentment, which I'd say (though without anything to back me up) is driven by the flower-smelling factors: family, friends, carne asada, etc.