Happiness Museum looks at brighter feelings in uncertain times
Happiness seems to have faded from our vocabulary amid the global pandemic, economic turmoil and, well, collective sense of doom and depression that is 2020. But in Denmark, a Happiness Museum sheds light on that elusive, but not forgotten, feeling.
www.cnn.com
www.museumofhappiness.org
This is an interesting enterprise to me, the study and promotion of happiness. My mother suffered from depression and, eventually, dementia. I have a little trouble with anxiety, occasionally. My daughter suffers from depression and anxiety and has been on medication for years. My love and interest in politics, fed by an almost constant viewing of 24 hr news channels, actually fed my anxiety and made me very unhappy most of the time. About a year ago my family convinced me to talk to my doctor about it to see if I needed to be on medication. He actually assigned me to a life coach who introduced me to meditation. That helped me start each day in a better frame of mind but soon I would be perusing the internet reading bad news, posts I disagreed with and getting into arguments with people I don’t even know.
Earlier this year, I was in that mindset, when a fellow Tugger responded to someone who had responded to one of my snarky posts by saying he had blocked me a few months ago and added, “Life‘s too short.” That really struck me because it was from one of my favorite Tuggers,
@Passepartout and it was during the time he was going through his recent health issues. I realized I wasn’t influencing anyone, I was just contributing to the bitterness and further feeding my own anger, frustration and unhappiness. I stepped back and didn’t post very much at all for a month or so. I still read TUG but I steered away from the “socially contentious“ posts that previously took up most of my time.
At some point during this time, I found a couple of websites devoted to good news. (They are listed in previous posts so I won’t repeat them here.) So, I added reading those websites to my routine following my morning meditation. In early June, I started this thread thinking, hoping maybe, some other Tuggers would like to see a few good news stories every day. I spend a couple of hours every morning reading and posting good news, interspersed with reading emails and talking to my lovely wife of almost 48 years. That time really grounds me and gets me focused on the things that are really important in life. Yes, it makes me happy!
So, to Jim, if you’re out there, thank you. Although your comment was not directed to me, it certainly struck me and I’m so glad it did. You were so right, life is too short. Changing my morning routine and what I choose to do, what I choose to read, and most importantly, what I choose to respond to, has made me so much happier.
And now, I’ve found there is a whole museum dedicated to the study of happiness that I never would have known about had I not started actively searching for good news. I’m looking forward to spending some time on their website and if I’m ever in Copenhagen, this museum will certainly be on my list of places to visit.
nationalzoo.si.edu
