During this stressful / hustle-bustle holiday season, many people are trying to be more reflective and asking / talking about happiness–what it is and how to get it?
I do not think that happiness is a product to ‘get’ like the Christmas presents at the department store we will be ‘getting’ for our friends and relatives… no, happiness is definitely in my opinion a verb, an activity.
And to push this further / more radically, happiness is fundamentally relational. This is a hard one for us hyper-individualist westerners to accept / agree with – I have a hard time as well, but even western science is jumping on this one – see a recent study out of Harvard reviewed on NPR recently, (http://www.harvardscience.harvard.edu/culture-society/articles/
having-happy-friends-can-make-you-happy), that finds – guess what – that happiness is related to how happy your friends are and how happy your friends-friends are, interesting piece to look at.
For the not so western view, I have been reading the Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. The journalist/protagonist is traveling around the world in search of happiness… In a Buddhist country, Bhutan, the natives explain that the western oft /overused phrase ‘personal happiness’ is bizarre and incomprehensible to them because they say that all happiness is relational, not personal.
So if you are thinking of ways to give back/ do charity work /celebrate the Christian and Jewish holidays with fellow humans in your life, one of the best gifts to give is to perform the activity of happiness with others – make it contagious and lets see where we can go!
Happy and Joyful Holidays to All!
Really like what you are saying in this post. It reminds me of community theater street fund raising we did where we would smile and welcome people to talk with us.
It would often invite reciprocal smiles and spread a little bit of joy on a city street corner. So, try it…smile and say hi to friends, neighbors and strangers alike…it’s contagious!
This is great. I have never really given that much thought as to how the emotions of others really do affect me too. I know that when my husband has a bad day though you are right- that brings me down too. I guess we should all try to do a better job of trying to have a positive attitude and hopefully that will share well with others. There really is no reason at all to let the attitudes of others bring us down yet now that I have read this I know that they do. I have had many perfectly good days ruined by the stresses of others and I hope to make the change to not allow this to happen anymore and to hopefully spread a bit more happiness to other people in my life through my own effforts at a better overall attitude toward life.
Happiness, like the sun, starts with a glimmer,
A ray.
Until surrounded by the light of day.
Love your poetry!
Thank you.
I have some posted. Maybe 15 or so on poetry.com under Lisa Ann Doyle. I believe it starts with Untitled, Alive, Blue fire etc. Enjoy.
Lisa
http://www.poetry.com/Publications/search.asp?First=Lisa+&Last=Doyle&submit.x=53&submit.y=15