Happiness Lessons from Around the World

Happiness Is Knowing Where You Come From (Switzerland)

The Swiss are deeply rooted in place. Their passports list the name of their ancestral town. Not their hometown but the town of their roots. Maybe they weren't born there. Maybe they've never even been there. But it is their home. It's been said that the Swiss only become Swiss upon leaving the country. Until then, they are Genevans or Zurichers, or otherwise defined by where they happen to come from. No wonder it was the Swiss who invented the modern concept of homesickness; they were the first to put a word,

to that nagging feeling of dislocation, that feeling of loss we experience when uprooted from the place we call home.