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When we speak of happiness, it’s often in terms of cultivating it within ourselves, drawing it out from the world around us, leveraging healthy habits, and being mindful and present. During this time of year, we even think of ways to spin it into a joy that can be spread around and shared with others. The exploration of happiness dates to the ancient Greek philosophers. It was Epicurus (341 BC-270 BC) who urged for a life categorized by a happy state of being. When his contemporaries waived off the pursuit of happiness as wasteful and selfish, he pushed back, holding firm that it can only be achieved by the exact opposite impulses: simple living and unwavering devotion to friendship and community.  He urged that simple pleasures were worth honoring and believed deeply that our connections, when properly nurtured and prioritized, offer safety and contentment. Without them, he warned, life can become isolating and perilous.

Epicurus’s “community” was surely smaller and more concentrated than ours here in modern times. We busily enter and exit different groups all day long- co-workers, neighborhoods, pickleball groups, kids’ sports teams. Some of these circles are obligatory and not of our own choosing. In those cases, sometimes harmony within them is disrupted by prickly encounters or incompatible personalities. But they’re still our communities, and Epicurus would probably tell us it is critical to our own happiness to care for them as best we can.

Live in the light… and share it.

Regular readers of this newsletter know that I often quote the Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn (1926-2022). It’s impossible to resist the temptation to do so again here while speaking of connection and community. In his teachings, he spoke of two options when deciding how to live our lives: we can choose to live in the dark or to live in the light. To live in the light requires that you not only light your own candle but also that you share the flame. Think about it- when you light someone else’s candle, your flame doesn’t extinguish. In fact, you can light many people’s candles, many times over, and your flame will still flicker and burn.

Here are some ways to share light from your flame with those around you:

• Write a note to a friend who lost a loved one this year. Let them know that you’ll be thinking of them this holiday season.
• If your child has outgrown last year’s winter coat and it’s still in great condition (they outgrow them so fast!), send a photo of it to a co-worker who might like it for their own child or grandchild.
• Drop off some chicken soup for a sick friend.
• Call an officemate while you’re in line buying your coffee, and ask them to give you their order.

Push yourself to learn things so your perspective stays open

One of the most supportive things you can do for the people around you is to keep your perspective wide. Believe in them, seek to understand them, and remember that everyone has a reason for the things they do- even if those things seem kind of crummy. A good way to keep your perspective open is to constantly learn. Read books, listen to podcasts, focus on the lyrics in music, try movies that are outside of what you might normally choose. You’ve certainly seen plenty of studies by this point that show as we lean harder into screens and social media, the more we are turning away from reading and the arts. The arts have the capacity to expand our minds. When you read a fiction book, for example, you are learning a story through a different viewpoint, stretching your perspective. When you encounter someone different in one of your communities, it’s easier for you to imagine their position and feel empathy for their situation. An article published by the collective PsychSafety explains that when we escape into a good story, we are seeing how life is experienced by someone else. Over time, we begin to apply these worlds and the character’s stories to the people around us.

To choose a good book, follow these steps:
1. Pick a genre that you like.
2. Think about the pacing you prefer: a page-turner? Or a story that burns slowly?
3. What style of writing appeals to you most? Conversational, spare, detailed, poetic…
4. Enter these parameters in Goodreads, ChatGPT, or even Reddit to get a recommendation.
5. See if you can find a sample to read or find the book jacket blurb to confirm your choice.

You grow what you plant

Beyond good books, nurture your brain by limiting the low-quality content you feed it. If you plant weeds, you’ll grow weeds. Meaning, if you are loading up on violent television, and junky Tik Tok posts, and getting worked up by the news cycle, it becomes much harder  to shine a peaceful and kind light to the people in your community. To grow something beautiful and useful in your mind, you need to plant positive seeds. Turn off the news if it’s giving you heart palpitations. Avoid office gossip by simply not partaking or excusing yourself when it starts to happen- people will get the idea. Seek out the people who make you feel good, confident, and make you laugh. Speak positively to yourself too. Train your social media to send you only positive posts by liking and bookmarking posts or following accounts that reflect that positivity. You can train the algorithm on Instagram, for example, by hitting three dots in the upper right-hand corner and selecting “not interested” for any post that is rubbish to you.

There are many different approaches to happiness but working on igniting your flame so that you can share it with others is a good way to start this holiday season. All of your communities are an important part of who you are and if you give them the best of you, you’ll likely get the best of them too.