Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Habit de-forming, for health and happiness

Harvard Center for Health and Happiness (@HarvardCenterHH) tweeted:

"All habits need to be re-examined from time to time."

This @GreaterGoodSC podcast examines the practice of temporarily abstaining from something you find enjoyable. Featuring @michaelpollan & Dr. @DunnHappyLab. https://t.co/bH0Remkn1e https://t.co/LNmO6oJ7DQ
(https://twitter.com/HarvardCenterHH/status/1418658460753858560?s=02)

Not an either/or

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Wobegon happiness

 A ball game, a book, and a brat: happiness

Posted on July 9, 2021 - Columns

Being a 78-year-old unemployed orphan does not qualify me as a tragic victim and that is just a fact, plus the fact I am married to a woman who has a big heart, loves a good time, is fond of me in particular, and she is also able to read instruction manuals, which is something you don’t notice during courtship, your mind is on other things, but now in the twilight years when one is tempted to throw the new printer over the parapet and hear it crash on the pavement below, it is good to have a rationalist in my life.

So I don’t need to discuss my fear and loathing of washers, dryers, coffee makers, and air conditioners, their mysterious manuals, because that’s her department so instead I’ll tell about Amazon and their purchase of MGM this summer, which earned a bundle for my family so that people now assume we’re going to leave Minnesota and move to an island in the Caribbean. No way.READ MORE


Happiness comes to those who don’t give a rip
Posted on July 6, 2021 - Columns

I am a happy man now that I know what the secret of happiness is, which, according to Buddha and Jesus both, is to give up wanting things. It’s just that simple. I’ve bought houses in hopes of happiness, taken vacation trips to Hawaii and Norway and Barbados, bought three-piece suits and shirts with French cuffs, and spent as much as $28 on a haircut, and felt vaguely dissatisfied after, but now I am 78, an age at which I expected to be cranky and of course there’s still time but now I discover I can’t get what I want because I’ve forgotten what it is. So there you are. Time solves another problem.

Happiness is rare for a writer, an occupation with a failure rate somewhere around 85 or 92 percent. If doctors had our failure rate, America would be a country of about 15 million, most of them not feeling well. The westward migration would’ve ended at the Mississippi. Why cross a big river when you’re already nauseated and feverish?

Luckily, we writers get to discard our mistakes, unlike doctors. In this line of work, there are no autopsies. I threw away two versions of the first paragraph, each one dumber than the other, and nobody will ever see them, just the one that begins “I am a happy man.” Two sheets of paper, crumpled, in the wastebasket, made me happy.READ MORE

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Surprised by joy

Wonking Out: mRNA and the Meaning of Life

Americans are suddenly feeling good. Why?

Happy days are here again. No, really. Gallup has been asking Americans since the beginning of 2008 whether they are "thriving." The percentage answering yes hit a low point in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis and again during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. But it has soared in recent months, to 59.2 percent, its highest level ever...

Paul Krugman, nyt 

Saturday, July 10, 2021

A Young Naturalist Inspires With Joy, Not Doom

At 17, Dara McAnulty is becoming one of Britain’s most acclaimed nature writers, with work that touches on his autism as much as the world around his home.

MONEYDARRAGH, Northern Ireland — While he carefully stepped from one moss-carpeted rock to another, Dara McAnulty outlined his rules for nature watching.


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“You’ll never see something if you bring a camera,” he said on this coastal stretch of Northern Ireland, “and you’ll definitely never see what you’re intending to find.”


His rules quickly proved true. McAnulty had wanted to use the ramble near his home to show off the local curlew population, but it was high tide — with waves sending salt spray spurting over the rocks — and there were no birds to be seen.


Instead, he squatted down to stare into a rock pool in search of his latest obsession: shrimp. Seaweed swayed in the water, but there were no signs of marine life. Then, suddenly, he noticed the smallest movement. “Oh, there’s a shrimpy boy!” he shouted. “Oh my God, it’s amazing. Can you see it? Can you see it?”


(continues) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/books/dara-mcanulty-diary-of-a-young-naturalist.html?smid=em-share

Collective effervescence

There’s a Specific Kind of Joy We’ve Been Missing

We find our greatest bliss in moments of collective effervescence. It’s a concept coined in the early 20th century by the pioneering sociologist Émile Durkheim to describe the sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose. Collective effervescence is the synchrony you feel when you slide into rhythm with strangers on a dance floor, colleagues in a brainstorming session, cousins at a religious service or teammates on a soccer field. And during this pandemic, it’s been largely absent from our lives.


Collective effervescence happens when joie de vivre spreads through a group...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/opinion/sunday/covid-group-emotions-happiness.html?smid=em-share

Sunday, June 27, 2021

"Our culture... values happiness inordinately"

From The New York Times: We Want to Travel and Party. Hold That Thought. How to grieve 16 months of sickness, death and isolation.

...Facing suffering head-on is not an easy task or one that’s encouraged in our culture, which values happiness inordinately. Telling or changing our story takes time, and it can be a painful process. But it’s a necessary one if we want to move past the brokenness of this difficult year toward a newfound sense of wholeness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/opinion/covid-pandemic-grief.html?smid=em-share