“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.

A couple of Sundays ago, I spent the entire day in my pajamas. It was cold and rainy outside, my husband and son were sick, and it just seemed so much more pleasant to drink tea and read a book than go out. I even baked coconut chocolate chip zucchini bread. Without thinking about it at the time, I was practicing my version of hygge.

Hygge—pronounced approximately “Hoo-gah”—is a Danish concept that has recently been attracting plenty of attention and popularity. While hygge is most often translated as “coziness,” Danish researcher and hygge expert Jeppe Trolle Linnet suggests it would be translated more accurately as “homeyness,” with home being a place to shut out the negativity of the outside world. You can hygge at home, or in a cozy café, or even picnicking in the park—it’s the atmosphere that counts the most. Hygge can be used as a noun, a verb or an adjective!


Pia Edberg, writing in The Cozy Life, describes it this way: “the art of creating warmth, comfort, and wellbeing through connection, treasuring the moment, and surrounding yourself with the things you love.” And while many factors go into making the Danes some of the happiest people in the world, hygge surely must be one reason.

In the fullest sense of the word, true hygge is often planned carefully. It usually involves other people you know well or feel comfortable with, and often some element of the homemade, such a bread or cake. Hygge equals people bonding together and helping each other, especially during the cold, dark winter months. To experience hygge, stay off electronic devices and interact with others. Enjoy simple, old-fashioned pleasures like telling stories or reading aloud. Some equate hygge with mindful living and simple pleasures—things like:

Hygge traditionally involves togetherness, but why not create that cozy feeling even when you’re alone? Slowing down, pausing, relaxing, taking time to think about what you love and value, and making time to enjoy those things is hygge-ligt, or hygge-like.

Prudy is a hygge expert

Hygge is all about simple pleasures, about helping people make it through a cold, dark, and difficult time, such as a Scandinavian winter. I can’t think of a more Catching Happiness-like concept! 

What simple pleasures contribute to a feeling of hygge for you?

If you want to explore hygge in more detail, check out the following books:

The Cozy Life, Pia Edberg

The Little Book of Hygge, Meik Wiking

The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Contentment,Comfort, and Connection, Louisa Thomsen Brits

How to Hygge: The Nordic Secrets to a Happy Life, Signa Johansen

Introduction by Ted Kooser: We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, “Well, you know, love is like...it’s like...well, YOU know what it's like.” Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.

Geology

I know the origin of rocks, settling

out of water, hatching crystals

from fire, put under pressure

in various designs I gathered

pretty, picnic after picnic.

And I know about love, a little,

igneous lust, the slow affections

of the sedimentary, the pressure

on earth out of sight to rise up

into material, something solid

you can hold, a whole mountain,

for example, or a loose collection

of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.

Reprinted from the Marlboro Review, Issue 16, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright © 2005 by Robert King, whose prose book, Stepping Twice Into the River: Following Dakota Waters, appeared in 2005 from The University Press of Colorado. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The column does not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”

—William Butler Yeats

For the past week, I’ve found myself waking every morning from anxious dreams. I’m OK during the day when I can use my conscious mind to relax, but by night, my subconscious takes over…and evidently it’s worried. I suspect this is a reaction to the level of anxiety in my nation and the world right now. While I can’t seem to help being anxious and worried about the future, I realize that those feelings are completely useless and are robbing me of joy. Maybe you feel the same? So I’ve been actively trying to reduce my anxiety levels instead of pretending things are fine or simply distracting myself. Here are four things I’m doing to combat anxious feelings:

There’s nothing ground-breaking here, but that doesn’t mean these practices are either easy or worthless. They are within my power to do, as so many other things are not.

As Corrie ten Boom said, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” Now if only I could convince my subconscious of that.

How do you soothe yourself when you feel anxious?

Photo courtesy Andreas Nusko

Introduction by Ted Kooser: My maternal grandparents got their drinking water from a well in the yard, and my disabled uncle carried it sloshing to the house, one bucket of hard red water early every morning. I couldn’t resist sharing this lovely little poem by Minnesota poet, Sharon Chmielarz.

New Water

All those years—almost a hundred—

the farm had hard water.

Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange.

Sink and tub and toilet, too,

once they got running water.

And now, in less than a lifetime,

just by changing the well’s location,

in the same yard, mind you,

the water’s soft, clear, delicious to drink.

All those years to shake your head over.

Look how sweet life has become;

you can see it in the couple who live here,

their calmness as they sit at their table,

the beauty as they offer you new water to drink.

“Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don't recognize happiness even when it is

within their grasp.”

—Robert Baden-Powell

I’ve been thinking about a forensic investigation technique lately—and not just because I like reading mysteries. No, it’s because I recently came across Dr. Edmond Locard’s principle of exchange, which states, “Every contact leaves a trace.” This principle is the basis of forensic science—trace evidence, such as fingerprints, DNA, footprints, or fibers, can now be used to link people or objects to crime scenes.

Every contact does leave a trace, and not just forensically speaking. The people around us, and what we allow into our surroundings and our minds, leave traces on us and in us. We all have people in our lives who inspire, energize, and encourage us, and thank goodness for them. We probably also know people who drain us of energy or leave us anxious and irritated after every encounter. To protect our happiness and overall mental state, we can seek out the people and things which lift us up, while minimizing contact with the people and things which leave a negative trace.

I try to walk the line between hiding from the legitimate problems in the world and allowing them too much space in my head. I know what I choose to read and to watch leaves a trace, so I don’t choose to read or watch certain things, no matter how worthy they might be. I surround myself as much as is in my power with things I want to leave a trace on my world. My office especially is a place that holds symbols and talismans of inspiration, as well as reminders of love others have shown me, and things I aspire to.  I’m also fortunate enough to have a great deal of control over the people I interact with, and therefore most of them leave positive traces.

What about the traces we ourselves are leaving? It bears remembering that we have the power to influence others with our words and actions.  After all, happiness is contagious.

With every interaction, we touch others and they touch us. What kind of trace will you leave?

Introduction by Ted Kooser: A while back we published a column in which I talked about my delight in the many names of kinds of apples, and mentioned Louise Bogan's marvelous mid-century poem “The Crossed Apple.” Here's yet another fine apple-name poem for my collection, by Susan Rothbard, who lives in New Jersey.

That New

At the market today, I look for Piñata

apples, their soft-blush-yellow. My husband

brought them home last week, made me guess at

the name of this new strain, held one in his hand

like a gift and laughed as I tried all

the names I knew: Gala, Fuji, Honey

Crisp—watched his face for clues—what to call

something new? It’s winter, only tawny

hues and frozen ground, but that apple bride

was sweet, and I want to bring it back to him,

that new. When he cut it, the star inside

held seeds of other stars, the way within

a life are all the lives you might live,

each unnamed, until you name it.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Susan Rothbard, “That New,” from the Cortland Review, (No. 58, 2012). Poem reprinted by permission of Susan Rothbard and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

During the week between Christmas and Jan. 1, I begin my official year-end wrap up and planning for the next year. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I do set some big, overarching goals at this time. Or try to. I have a problem with big, overarching goals. Oh, I can set them all right, but I struggle with the nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty practicality of how to get from here to there. I’m going to try something new this year, which I’ll get to later, but first, I’m going to share with you some tools I use for planning my goals for a new year.

Before I get into any goal setting, I look back over the past year to see what I’ve accomplished and where I’ve fallen short. This year, I used Marie Forleo’s three-question review, but I also wrote down a list of some of the more mundane things I did that nevertheless were accomplishments, such as reading 109 books, posting to Catching Happiness 106 times, and starting a regular sketching practice (three months and counting). While I fell short on working on my book idea, riding Tank bridleless, purging my house of unneeded items, and various and sundry other goals, 2016 was a better-than-average year for me. I took a moment to savor those accomplishments before moving on to…

Next, I start writing out all the things that are floating around in my head that I would like to see accomplished in the coming year. This is where I allow myself to dream big, and I include as many of the nagging tasks I’d like to see finished as I can think of. This year, I’ve made a list called “70 in ’17”—70 things I want to happen in 2017. Some of these are writing goals (complete a draft of that book, write some haiku), some are household goals (buy new light fixture for kitchen nook, stain the chairs on the front porch), and some are just for fun (do puzzle with M, buy some new music, go to Fannin Hill with Tank). My idea is to work from this list as I sit down to plan each month.

This is the new thing I mentioned above. I recently read The12-Week Year, and I’m experimenting with 12-Week planning. I’m hoping this will solve my problem with carrying out my bigger goals by helping me break them down into much smaller, more do-able increments. So far, I’m still struggling a bit with that—my perfectionism (fear in disguise?) is hampering my ability to choose and break down appropriate goals, but I’m making progress.

Word of the Year

As I’ve done in past years, I choose a word of the year to guide me. Previous years’ words have included open, light, passion, and quality. This year’s word is “deeper.” I want it to encourage me to stop skimming the surface and go deeper, to find the riches that are buried. Be less superficial, more real. Do fewer things, but do them better.

In January, all things seem possible. It’s in the actual doing that we sometimes run into problems. All this planning, for me, is intended to keep me on track. I share these practices with you in case there’s anything here you might like to try for yourself.

How do you plan for a new year? Do you have any goals or dreams for 2017 you’d like to share?

“A new year is a gift, a small piece of infinity, to do with as we will. Things happen. We grow (we hope), and we learn willy nilly. Life moves around us, life moves through us to others, and the year gradually accepts its pattern. We give, we take, we resist, we flow. Our reachings, acceptances, rejections, our hesitancies, courage, fears, and our loves, all these form the shape of the year for each of us, as individuals, as part of a family, as a member of a community.”

—Jean Hersey, The Shape of a Year

I hope you had a most happy and refreshing holiday season. Even though it was 85 degrees on Christmas Day, we enjoyed hosting family for a meal, and apparently we were very good this year, because we all received delightful gifts.

I spent last week sleeping in, puttering around, dreaming and making plans for 2017, reading, and (let’s be honest) keeping Prudy out of the Christmas tree until I could take it down yesterday. This year’s broken ornament count: two. Not bad.

For me personally, 2016 was an excellent year, and I plan to build on that success in 2017. I have fun plans for Catching Happiness, too—so stick around!

Happy New Year—may it bring you much joy, growth, and meaning!

I typically take a break from blogging during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and I’m doing just that next week. For me, this time of year is a time of reflection and planning. I’ll be reviewing 2016, working on setting goals, and choosing a word of the year next week, as well as spending a little extra time reading for pleasure, and resting up after hosting the family for Christmas. I didn’t want you to have Catching Happiness withdrawals (haha) so I prepared this Link Love for you to enjoy while I’m gone.

I loved Marie Forleo’s three-question end-of-the-year review process.  Simple, yet powerful.

For a more in-depth review of 2016, try Sandra Pawula’s 18 questions. There’s a free downloadable workbook, as well. 

I find choosing a word of the year a helpful practice (though I didn’t write about it on the blog, 2016’s word was “Quality.”) Here’s an article by Liz Smith about choosing a guiding word for 2017. As she writes, “Once you have your word, let it light the unknown path for you next year.”

I rarely listen to podcasts, but it’s something I would like to do more of in the coming year. I just discovered the Beaks and Geeks podcast, thanks to an email from Penguin Random House. Here’s a link to a round-up of “10 Best of Books Author Podcasts.” I’ll probably listen to some of these next week as well.

I would love to try this monthly art and inspiration subscription from Holstee. I’m adding it to my list of treats/rewards. (No affiliation.)

If you’re looking for a way to improve your habits, you can try this habit-tracking calendar. (No affiliation.)

And on a less introspective note, I’ve spent far too much time watching Simon’s Cat videos on YouTube. Why don’t you join me? Click below for the Christmas Collection:

“Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give—pleasure, possessions, power—but  lack peace of mind, you can never be happy.”

—Dada Vaswani

I indulge in the comforts of life—comfort food, comfort reads, comfortable routines—at least as much as the next person. But I must admit that dis-comfort has also played an important and positive role in my life. As much as I hate to admit it, discomfort does more to help me towards my best life than comfort does.

Why is discomfort important? Discomfort prompts us to change. It’s a sign that something is wrong or needs attention. If things are great as they are, why would you want or need to change? It’s that restless, edgy, something’s-not-quite-right feeling that spurs us on to better things.

For example, when I become uncomfortable in my body, I increase my exercise and monitor my eating if it’s my weight that’s bothering me. If I’m exhausted, I get more sleep, and if I’m hurting, I make appointments with professionals who can help me feel better. When the mess in my office becomes uncomfortable, it’s time to go through the paper piles (see photo!). Most recently I’ve become uncomfortable with the amount of stuff in my house. I’m not a minimalist (or a hoarder), but my belongings are weighing on me rather than bringing me joy and comfort. I’ve tipped over the edge of enough into too much. Discomfort will help me pare away the “too much” and reach the “just right.”

Sometimes I’ll notice that nagging feeling of discomfort around my behavior. I’ll say or do something and wonder later what I was thinking. Or I’ll hear myself talking griping about a situation to a friend or my husband, and realize there’s something about it that’s getting under my skin. Often, this means it’s time to examine my motives, my needs, and my true desires. Do my actions match up with my stated goals? If not, time to change.

I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with being in our comfort zones…sometimes. If we were constantly uncomfortable, it would make for an unpleasant, unhappy life. Our comfort zones can be places to relax and recharge, places to regroup and ready ourselves for a return to the discomfort zone—because that’s where real growth takes place.

Is anything causing you discomfort right now? Does something need to change?

Introduction by Ted Kooser: We are never without our insect companions, even in winter, and here’s one who has the run of the house. Roger Pfingston lives in Indiana.

December

Lodged tight for days

in a corner of the wall,

ladybug can’t resist the tree

crawling now over cold

light, ceramic fruits,

tinsel lamb and sleigh.

Flies out of the tree

to try rum cake on a

plate of caroling cherubs.

Ends up on her back,

wings flared, silly girl

spinning over the kitchen floor.

Later, between the blinds,

tiny bump of silhouette:

a stillness against the falling snow.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Roger Pfingston and reprinted from Poetry East, Nos. 80 & 81, Fall 2013. Roger Pfingston’s most recent book of poems is A Day Marked for Telling, Finishing Line Pr., 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Roger Pfingston and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Despite my stated goal of reducing the to-be-read (TBR) stack of books I own, the theme of 2016 could easily be summed up in the title of this post. Never mind that my closet shelves already groaned beneath the weight of books I just HAD to have, never mind that even a rapid reader would literally have reading material for years, I have gone and purchased (or received from Paperback Swap) more than 50 books this year.

While I’ve been diligent about reading from my stack, there’s simply no way to get ahead—that is, reduce the TBR stack to a more manageable level—if I keep buying books at such a pace.

But really, who can resist David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls for 50 cents?  The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady for $1? Or even At Home With Beatrix Potter for $8.50? Not I.

It’s not just the books themselves that I love—I love the hunt. I carry lists of books I’m looking for in my purse. I search out used bookstores when I’m on vacation, and I happily troll the Internet for books to add to my collection.

There is a way to fix this, I know. Simply stop going into the Friends of the Library bookstore at my local library. Stop frequenting used bookstores. Stop reading book blogs because they introduce me to books I want to read and if I can’t find them at the library I end up adding them to my wish list (and we all know what I wind up doing then—say it with me—recklessly buying books). Stop reading the book reviews in my Sunday paper (because: see above).

But who am I kidding? I’m not going to do, or stop doing, any of those things. Searching for books is a huge source of simple pleasure and happiness. This is a relatively harmless addiction, since most of my book purchases are $10 or less. I could collect Faberge eggs, or antique cars, or even first editions, all of which cost a lot more than my second-hand copy of P.G. Wodehouse’s A Damsel in Distress. And my TBR stack is not—yet—a fire hazard.

I have to conclude that unless my very nature changes, I’ll continue recklessly buying books.

I can live with that.

How about you? Anything you’ve spent 2016 “recklessly buying”?

“It takes great wit and interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.”

—Robert Herrick

I’m thrilled to share with you my latest published article, “Wanted: One Dream Horse.” Written for the American Quarter Horse Association’s member publication America’s Horse, it’s the story of how I came to buy Tank. You can read it in full here.

Introduction by Ted Kooser: We've been selecting poems for this column for more than ten years and I can't remember ever publishing a poem about a cat. But here at last is a cat, a lovely old cat. Ron Koertge lives in California, and his most recent book of poems is Vampire Planet: New & Selected Poems, from Red Hen Press.

No one would take her when Ruth passed.

As the survivors assessed some antiques,

I kept hearing, “She's old. Somebody

should put her down.”

I picked her up instead. Every night I tell her

about the fish who died for her, the ones

in the cheerful aluminum cans.

She lies on my chest to sleep, rising

and falling, rising and falling like a rowboat

fastened to a battered dock by a string.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Ron Koertge, “Lily,” from Vampire Planet: New & Selected Poems, (Red Hen Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Ron Koertge and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.