Happy Week: Who’s With You?

The Preaching Roundtable

Bad things happen.

In my first 5 years of marriage, both my parents and my only grandparents died.   We moved.  We changed jobs.  We had a couple miscarriages.  And we also had three healthy kids – which was good – but not easy.  But we were blessed with a sense of okay-ness, if not joy, in those first five years.  We were happy.

HH and I  are still happy after many more years together, but this is not a post about married life.  It’s about life.  My hope is that I’d also be happy (okay if not joyful) even if I’d remained single.  I know life would be different but I suspect it would still be good.

One characteristic that increases happiness is resilience.  There have been studies, in particular on the resilience of clergywomen which say we can learn how to be more resilient which makes us happier.  One tool:  community.

Much of what adds to our happiness involves the support systems we have around us.  Daniel Gilbert, who teaches psychology at Harvard,  wrote this:

If I had to summarize all the scientific literature on the causes of human happiness in one word, that word would be “social.” If I wanted to predict your happiness, and I could know only one thing about you, I wouldn’t want to know your gender, religion, health, or income.  I’d want to know about your social network – about your friends and family and the strength of your bonds with them.

Whatever you do for work and life, what communities have made it better?