If your week was anything like mine, you’re ready for some easy-to-digest positive content. With the world being what it is at the moment, it’s easy to slip into negativity. So it’s important to remember to find a bit of happiness every day. And since I’m a visual thinker, I love to capture and share the good moments.
Once in a while, I’ll be doing a visual post like this one to take a break from heavy thinking.
So here are the 7 things that made me happy this week. I hope it’s contagious.
1. Wine festival with the girls
What’s life in Southern California if not a series of wine festivals? Luckily, one of my best friends is a wine nerd who arranges these trips.
Here’s to doing my best to leave the house at 10 AM on a Sunday after a 5-hour sleep, and leaving behind a three-year-old, to do nothing but drink wine and talk silly things with my girlfriends.
I almost cancelled three times but in the end, I was so glad I didn’t.
2. Spontaneous neighbor visits
As I’ve written in the past, human interactions are essential to our happiness levels, and I’ve been learning to embrace a community-living mindset, inspired by my time spent in Denmark.
Here’s a picture from our spontaneous visit to the neighbor’s apartment, followed by Turkish tea and a playdate. While many people frown upon unplanned stop-bys, I’m lucky to have neighborhs whose culture celebrates such behavior.
There are, no doubt, rules involved with spontaneity, but overall, I’m surprised at how happy it makes me to see my neighbor in her pajamas asking to “borrow” milk.
3. Being understood
I was standing at a busy road intersection with a stroller when I saw this. Nothing happy about the image itself but it speaks the truth that Scandinavians fully embrace: cars are a luxury and not the main mode of transportation in cities.
High car taxes in Scandinavia mean better public transport and bicycle infrastructures, which in turn mean less pollution and a healthier population.
Thank you, random person, for agreeing with me.
4. Gifts from nature
If I learned anything about early childhood from Scandinavian countries, it’s that it’s meant to be spent outdoors and in connection with nature. When I returned to the U.S. and had a kid, I was shocked at how little we understood such a simple principle.
Since my daughter was born, I’ve been doing my best to teach her about nature, and educate myself in the process.
Here, we found a giant caterpillar in our courtyard and instead of going with my first instinct (“Ewwww”), I went “Awwww” and looked up close with my daughter to notice that the caterpillar had eyes and something of a tail. I’m probably wrong but who cares. It made my daughter happy.
5. Perfection in the detail
For my daughter’s friend’s birthday party, I went shopping at our local wooden toy store instead of buying from Amazon. I was surprised when they offered to wrap my $20 gift for free. And what a beautiful job they did!
These days, it makes me happy to see brick-and-mortar businesses (especially woman-run) that are doing well and going the extra mile for their customers.
They say perfection is in the detail, and so is happiness.
6. Balloons and birthdays
My daughter went to a well-orchestrated but low-key birthday party and it made me so happy to see her interact with other mini-people. Inspired by education in Denmark, I enrolled her in a Waldorf school, which promotes an alternative (for the U.S.) approach to both schooling and parenting and attracts more relaxed, less ambitious parents, which is a must for everyone’s happiness.
Even better, there was wine! Nothing makes me happier than wine at a school event, which is almost unheard of in America.
And there were balloons! I think we should all have balloons in our lives with and without occasions. You can’t have too much joy!
7. A delicious present
A delicious no-reason gift from my neighbors. What a delight indeed!
Thanks for sharing!