#22 The Happiest Man in the World

【What I've been up to】

Hi, Reader,
I hope this letter finds you well.

Last Sunday I hosted an in-person book club on Four Thousand Weeks in Kaohsiung,
trying a new format: besides the usual book discussion,
we added locking away our phones, a meditation session and card games to break the ice.

It went really well, and with only seven people
everyone had plenty of room to share their views.

Afterwards a friend asked me, “Were you the speaker?”
I said, “I just organized it — everyone was a speaker.”

I love small, deep conversations like this and hope to host more.
If you like this kind of event, come join us —
or recommend events like this to me :)

Here's a video of the event.

As for the online book club,
this week we finally finished Four Thousand Weeks.

The book was so dense I split it into three online sessions.
The recordings are on YouTube (in Mandarin) if you're interested.

Now, on to today's topic.

【The happiest man in the world】

Today I want to tell you about the happiest man in the world.

I'd come across his story in several books but never looked into it, until I was preparing the Four Thousand Weeks book club. The book mentions him again, so I finally looked him up and watched his documentary.

First, some background.

He's a Cuban-American named Mario Salcedo, a financial adviser who holds the world record for the longest time living on cruise ships — more than twenty years. Yes, you read that right.

The ship's crew call him “Super Mario.”

Lance Oppenheim made a short documentary about him called The Happiest Guy in the World.

I looked it up — you can watch it for free on YouTube.

In the film he says: “I don't have to take out the trash, clean or do laundry. All the chores that add no value, I don't have to do. I can spend all my time enjoying myself.”

He strolls the deck, cocktail in hand, telling other passengers, “I'm probably the happiest guy in the world!” People smile, nod and congratulate him, looking slightly awkward.

He greets the crew warmly, with hugs and kisses on the cheek, and plans his next trip with his so-called “friends” — who in reality look like regulars he's met on cruises and gotten to know over time.

He lives alone on the ship, with no family by his side.

One part of the interview stayed with me. He says that if he became seriously ill, he'd put on his scuba gear, dive 400 feet down and never come back up, because he'd rather die in the sea than lie in a hospital waiting to die.

What I thought was: where's your family? Why do you live on a ship alone? Why, if you got sick, wouldn't your family be there to look after you?

He claims he's happy, and I can't be sure whether he really is. But I'm certain that if I lived his life, I wouldn't be happy — let alone “the happiest man in the world.”

The video was uploaded in 2018 and has 530,000 views. One comment, with more than 1,700 likes, says: he looks like me when I'm depressed and trying to tell everyone, “I'm fine, I'm OK.”

I actually laughed out loud, because that's exactly what I was thinking.

Clearly, Super Mario believes that having complete control of his time and doing what he likes is the greatest happiness.

But he seems to have overlooked something: happiness is shaped by many factors working together.

Harvard has a study of happiness that has followed its participants from youth to old age for 80 years, and it's still going.

The researchers wanted to know the biggest factor in happiness. In the end, money, wealth and prestige weren't the biggest factors. The most important was relationships — your connections with other people.

That's why, when I was a digital nomad in Japan, I was completely free — I could arrange my time however I wanted, without fitting anyone else's schedule — yet on the streets of Japan I still felt intensely lonely. I had no one to share the joy of that freedom with.

In the film Into the Wild, the main character, tired of society, goes off to live alone in the Alaskan wilderness. After 100 days in an abandoned bus he decides to return, but the river has swollen and he's trapped. He dies on the bus after eating a poisonous plant. Before he dies, he writes a line in his journal that has moved countless people: “Happiness only real when shared.”

If your happiness can't be shared with others — especially your family — is it real? I think the answer speaks for itself.

So when I saw Super Mario call himself the happiest man in the world, I was surprised. He has no connection with his family — can that really be happy? I'm not him, so I don't know his true answer, but I know I wouldn't be happy.

I'm sharing this story to remind you that real happiness doesn't require being as rich as Super Mario. As long as you have close family and friends who care about you, I believe you'll be happier than the happiest man in the world.

Happiness can actually be simple.

Wishing you well.

This week's episode

#67 | Investing is psychology, not math: The Psychology of Money #8 (finale)

There is no single right answer, because you are playing your own game. The author's choice to buy a home without a mortgage, raising savings as income grows, and building the ability to adapt instead of predicting.

Read the full show notes in English › (the episode is in Mandarin Chinese)

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