Abuntu: Hygge

 

 

The quest for happiness and peace is global, universal, and sits in the soul and desires so that we continue to have that longing.  Abuntu,an African term, means universal happiness.  Hygge, a Norweigian / Swedish word, speaks to fostering of deep connections with others, the environment and the present moment, and is similar in terms to abuntu.  Both speak to connectedness for the purpose of reaching happiness.  The comfort of connections is huge.    We need positive connections in ordr to be comforted, to mitigate stress and emotonal woundedness.  Shared experience deepen the positive aspects through connected healing.  From the beginning, we developed our tribe, and we would sacrifice much for the happiness and comfort and calm and peace of our tribe.

I love the fact that the African Bantu would bring a wrong-doer to the center of the village and everyone spoke of something good about that person in order to regain unity and harmony through compassion.  How far away have we come from that.

If you have abuntu in your life, it means that your tribe has a natural leader that is independent, ambitious, courageous, and is willing to take risks through advenruring into unknown territories.  Those of us who have adbuntu in our lives are what leaders are made of;  our energy levels are high, we resist cultural, societal, and personal barriers placed before us that might keep us from peace and serenity.  We seek weays to better ourselves so that we might send out vibes that we desire grace and admiration but not without need, but with confidence that we have gifts to share with the world in some small way, or some lage way, so peace might be obtained for all.

If we have hygge in our lives, we are content with who we are and what we are and the contenment is passed on to others through comfort and open caring for others of our tribe, of our country, of our world. 

Robert Shaplen, a writer for the New Yorker, reported that hygge was “ubiquitous” in the city: “The sidewalks are filled with smiling, hyggelige people, who keep lifting their hats to each other and who look at a stranger with an expression that indicates they wish they knew him well enough to lift their hats to him, too.” A hyggelige person wishes for only the basic needs in the comfort of shelter, sustenance, and a tribe of like-thinkers and doers. 

To heal the world and ourselves comes through by us all being encoruging and open-minded enough to allow others their opinions, without ire or judgement.  We need to be able to accept some things the way they are, to accept ourselves as we are, but with a mind that knows we are evolving every moment we breath. 

We need to show great compassion for people, palces and things as they too struggle to find their way to peace and happiness.  We need to reconnect with nature ( my way is finding gems and digging with my hands in the aromatic gid earth.  I hnor her in the way I honor the crystlas and jasper and agate and other gems that I find.  It is a huge responsibility to lighten up our environment, to make it pretty and inviting, and to spend time in it, for it shows us how to live with peace and scrifices  that keep others feeling pece and seneity when in yur environment.  It needs to be inviting, as well.  All of us need our own personal acred space within our envirnment;  a place that gives us space to soul-search, to ecscape within to restore ourelves.  We need to cultivate happiness and peace around us that affects others close to our ether so that, they, too, might feel peace and senity in that space when they are invited in.

In my garden, which is only about 9x9, I have found ways to light up the darknes.  My flowers are my chilren, the light stirs the night away in the predawn hours when I am typically awake and sitting outside t meditate, to pant, to spend time just BEING at one with the solace of a different kind of rest. 

Let us all seek that place and space to refill our every sense in order to feel happiness and peace and to buid up ur aura that is both comfort and compassion for others and other places and spaces and things.  Where is your refueling space? 

©Carol Desjarlais 7.26.22