Hello everyone! Hope this first week of September has treated you fairly; as for myself, some things got done, some things are still pending, and some things settled down, so not a bad week at all.
This fine Sunday we start by reviewing Rule #9 of the Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules:
Rule 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
I am no stranger to the “toxic positivity” mentality, the tendency to see everything through rose-tinted glasses that ends up being as harmful as its antagonistic mindset, the “doomer” / “everything is wrong with the world” mindset. Which is why I like the phrasing of this Rule: be happy whenever you can manage it. Some days it is simply not possible — some days you have to make room for sadness, grief or anger. But, this Rule says, if possible, choose joy. And it adds: it's lighter than you think. Not “it's always light”, but it's lighter than you think. Life sure has its moments of seriousness, but it would serve us well to remember more often than life is, indeed, lighter than we think.
In an effort to make it lighter for you ;), here are the things I found this week (or before) that managed to make me happy:
Music: Muffin Man, a song that came in a dream to Sean Bertram. I don't know about you, dear readers, but few things make me happier than complete strangers coming together through the Internet to collaborate on a catchy, upbeat song 😄.
Interesting read: Why Being a Side Character is the Key to Happiness – The Something Guy. I have seen a fair share of content that motivates you to be the main character of your life — mostly aimed at people that need that little push to take control of their lives — so it was refreshing to see this take on the benefits of not being that main character. Again, it's lighter than we think 😊.
Illustration: this diagram by Loopy on
TwitterX might be very useful:Video: if these researchers doing field work in Antarctica can manage to enjoy themselves while working, then truly anything is possible 😄
Video (2): You Need to Romanticize the Process, a video by Tozak Filming showing us some ways in which we can fall in love with the process of doing creative work, one of which is “have fun” — quite in line with the “enjoy yourself” part of this week's Rule.
(Although one might think only about art or related endeavors when talking about the “creative spirit”, in this house we believe that most things in life can be creative endeavors 😉)Inspirational thing: this is the secret to the magic of childhood
And that's it for this week! I wish you an enjoyable Sunday, and a week in which you can manage to squeeze in some happiness.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream,
— Ricardo
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