Three Paths to Happiness: USA, France & Vietnam

After spending nearly three years in France, we’ve finally returned to Vietnam — this time with an even deeper appreciation for its unique culture.

There’s a quiet kind of happiness that comes not from striving or growing, but from belonging — from feeling in tune with your surroundings, like a piece that naturally fits into the puzzle.

Growth brings meaning, but fitting brings peace. And both are essential at different times in life.

You might call it rooted joy — the kind that doesn’t shout or impress, but feels steady, warm, and whole.

Let’s compare how happiness takes shape in the USA, France, and Vietnam:

🇺🇸 USA: The Culture of Growth

In the U.S., happiness is often tied to achievement and personal development. The narrative centers around becoming your “best self”:

• Reinvent yourself.
• Push boundaries.
• Optimize everything.

Freedom and ambition define the mood. It’s energizing — you feel like anything is possible.

But it can be exhausting too, because peace is always one milestone away. Many people feel like they can’t slow down without falling behind.

Strength: Motivation, self-expression, transformation

Risk: Restlessness, isolation, burnout

🇫🇷 France: The Culture of Refinement & Belonging

In France, happiness is more often tied to quality of life, cultural depth, and being rather than becoming. It’s about:

• Taking your time.
• Doing less, but better.
• Savoring food, ideas, beauty, and relationships.

French happiness often comes from belonging to something elegant and coherent — a family, a culture, a rhythm. Life is about depth and nuance.

Strength: Balance, tradition, pleasure

Risk: Rigidity, resistance to change, elitism

🇻🇳 Vietnam: The Culture of Connection & Resilience

Vietnam offers another path: happiness through shared life, interdependence, and adaptive resilience.

• Strong family ties and multigenerational homes.
• Everyday rituals that root you in the moment (food, markets, neighborly gestures).
• Flexibility in the face of challenges — a deep cultural memory of survival and rebuilding.

There’s a sense that life happens in flow with others — not alone. People know their roles and expectations, and this creates a surprising sense of calm, even in chaos.

At the same time, there’s a pressure to fit the mold — especially for younger generations or women. Tradition is a precious anchor, but when misunderstood, it can hinder personal momentum.

Strength: Belonging, adaptability, simplicity

Risk: Conformity, lack of individual space, fear of shame

Summary Table

To resume

Each culture teaches a different path to happiness:

• USA teaches how to become.
• France teaches how to savor.
• Vietnam teaches how to flow with others.

But true happiness may come from navigating all three, depending on where you are in life.

Maybe you’re drawn to France when you want to deepen, to Vietnam when you want to feel rooted, and to America when you’re ready to change everything.

That’s the gift of traveling — not just through geography, but through different ways of being.

Of course, every culture has its exceptions, and in reality, things are often more complex and mixed — like a melting pot. But here, we’re speaking in terms of general cultural tendencies.

How to Build a Bridge Between the Cultures of Growth, Refinement, and Belonging

Bridging the gap between cultures isn’t a necessity — each one is already whole in its own way. Simply having the opportunity to experience different cultures is a gift in itself.

But for someone like me, who carries within them multiple influences and sometimes conflicting values, bridging those gaps feels more personal — almost like a quiet need to find harmony between the parts that don’t always align.

1. Hold Contradictions Without Needing to Resolve Them

You don’t have to choose between freedom and family, individuality and tradition, ambition and rest.

Instead, you learn to carry the tension between:

• The American push forward
• The French pause and savor
• The Vietnamese we before me

This is maturity: knowing when each quality is needed, and not being fixed by one single worldview.

2. Design a Rhythm That Includes All Three

Think in terms of cycles rather than balance:

This way, you create a daily or weekly flow that honors:

• Ambition
• Appreciation
• Affection

You’re not mixing them all at once — you’re honoring each at the right moment.

3. Surround Yourself with People from Each “World”

• Have ambitious friends who push you to dream bigger.
• Keep grounded, aesthetic people who remind you to enjoy the little things.
• Spend time with warm, connected families who remind you you’re part of something larger.

This gives you access to different parts of yourself depending on the setting — and prevents you from getting stuck in one model of life.

4. Craft a Personal Philosophy of “Enough”

• From America, take the drive, but not the burnout.
• From France, take the savoring, but not the cynicism.
• From Vietnam, take the belonging, but not the self-erasure.

Ask yourself regularly:

What kind of success is “enough”?

What kind of rest is “enough”?

What kind of community is “enough”?

You’ll begin to live your own culture, one that is woven — not borrowed.

5. Live with Integrity, Not Image

Each culture comes with its own pressure to perform:

• 🇺🇸 America: Be impressive.
• 🇫🇷 France: Be tasteful.
• 🇻🇳 Vietnam: Be proper.

Break the performance. Keep the core values, not the costumes.

You might:

• Dress simply like in Vietnam, but invest deeply in art like in France.
• Value freedom like in America, but protect the softness of community like in Vietnam.
• Build things in public like in the US, but rest in private like the French.

The bridge is you, choosing consciously.

Final Metaphor: Be a Tree with Three Roots

• One root in freedom and change (USA)
• One root in wisdom and aesthetics (France)
• One root in care and continuity (Vietnam)

Each root feeds your life in a different way.

And the leaves? That’s what the world sees — your unique, integrated self.

If you’re raising kids, creating a home, or even starting a creative project — this fusion can be your secret power.

Bonus : Why Vietnam reminds me of the Avatar universe?

Vietnam, like Avatar’s world, can feel cohesive, almost intact in a way that’s rare elsewhere. There’s this homogeneity— not in the sense of being all the same, but in the sense that everyone seems to be part of the same living fabric. The food, the language, the gestures, the family roles, the rhythms of the day — they all work together. It’s not fragmented. It’s holistic.

In the West, life often feels compartmentalized — work in one box, identity in another, spirituality maybe somewhere else. But in Vietnam, much like in Avatar, everything flows into everything else. Family and food are not separate. Spirit and land are not separate. Even street life feels like a kind of choreography.

That’s probably why being there can feel deeply grounding and almost healing, even with the noise and rush — because there’s an underlying coherence, a cultural wholeness that still holds.

The “Sky People” are essentially stand-ins for a Western, militarized, extractive worldview, while the Na’vi represent a holistic, spiritually grounded, native culture.

That’s likely why Avatar resonates so strongly across cultures. It speaks to something deeply felt but rarely expressed: a longing for reconnection, reverence, and respect — for land, for ancestry, for meaning.

And when you live in a place like Vietnam, you might feel that same contrast: between performance vs presence, efficiency vs tradition, control vs flow.