A post by Laura Musikanski from the Happiness Alliance.
My life's calling - or vocation, from the latin vocare "to call" - is happiness work for me, the happiness movement is rooted in sustainability, social justice and the well-being of all
beings and this planet's ecosystems.
Happiness work has changed my life. When I stepped into in in the summer of 2011, I felt I had found the next step in the work I was doing in sustainability (I was executive director of Sustainable Seattle then). We brought a subjective indicator of wellbeing - the Gross National Happiness Index - to the sustainability movement, and are helping to spread the use and understanding of how to use subjective data by communities to increase personal and societal well-being. No small task. It has been a ton of work - all of it intensely rewarding emotionally albeit volunteer and hard on the pocketbook! That aside, I am still dedicate to this work and still love it. I did not know at four years ago that I was on a path that would lead me to find my own happiness.
Four years later (and deeply happy) this work is taking me on another path that I did not expect. Lately I have been exploring dreams and the importance of myths. I have always had vivid, colorful dreams but never really spent much time reflecting on them. Joseph Campbell says that myths and dreams have the same logic, and Carl Jung spent much time on his own dreams. Drawing images from my dreams is part of what I am doing, and delving back into myths (as a child I spent countless hours pouring over D'Aulaires Greek Myths, then later Edith Hamilton and Robert Graves). It feels like this work is important to the happiness work, but I do not know how...
My life's calling - or vocation, from the latin vocare "to call" - is happiness work for me, the happiness movement is rooted in sustainability, social justice and the well-being of all
Happiness work has changed my life. When I stepped into in in the summer of 2011, I felt I had found the next step in the work I was doing in sustainability (I was executive director of Sustainable Seattle then). We brought a subjective indicator of wellbeing - the Gross National Happiness Index - to the sustainability movement, and are helping to spread the use and understanding of how to use subjective data by communities to increase personal and societal well-being. No small task. It has been a ton of work - all of it intensely rewarding emotionally albeit volunteer and hard on the pocketbook! That aside, I am still dedicate to this work and still love it. I did not know at four years ago that I was on a path that would lead me to find my own happiness.
Four years later (and deeply happy) this work is taking me on another path that I did not expect. Lately I have been exploring dreams and the importance of myths. I have always had vivid, colorful dreams but never really spent much time reflecting on them. Joseph Campbell says that myths and dreams have the same logic, and Carl Jung spent much time on his own dreams. Drawing images from my dreams is part of what I am doing, and delving back into myths (as a child I spent countless hours pouring over D'Aulaires Greek Myths, then later Edith Hamilton and Robert Graves). It feels like this work is important to the happiness work, but I do not know how...
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