Our country is notorious. We are pretty hard to ignore. We have the world's largest gross domestic product. Our companies find their ways into every corner of the globe. The business world has adopted our language. We are the largest developed country, and our citizens love to travel. Media outlets around the world follow our politics, and just about everyone everywhere knows who our president is. If we don't like what another country is doing, we mess with it....

The World Cup has always been a reality check for us, and a healthy one. We are a great country with rich options for culture, ideas, music, food and many other things that come from being a meeting point for people from around the world. But let's face it: We're still not that good at soccer, and we're not the one great country of the world, as some of us sometimes like to think. Looking like losers reminds us of that.

The World Cup is a time to learn from other countries' successes. Maybe we should look to Uruguay, that tiny country with a history of World Cup glory. Uruguay's president donates about 90 percent of his salary to charity, lives on his wife's farm instead of in the lavish presidential palace and drives an old Volkswagen Beetle by choice. At the end of last year, Uruguay became the first country to fully legalize the sale, cultivation and distribution of marijuana, a step it has taken not to raise tax revenues but, as its politicians contend, to reduce cartel profits and crime.

Maybe we ought to get inspired by this year's surprise star, Costa Rica, which the Happy Planet Index named the happiest country in the world in its two most recent rankings because of the country's high measure of experienced well-being, long life expectancy and relatively low ecological footprint....