From what I've read, the most consistent and reliable source of personal happiness is a good social life. Not drunken Friday Afternoon Clubs, but connections with a network of people you know and care about. It doesn't have to be living in each others' laps. It's the sense that if your house burned down, there would be people around you …
From what I've read, the most consistent and reliable source of personal happiness is a good social life. Not drunken Friday Afternoon Clubs, but connections with a network of people you know and care about. It doesn't have to be living in each others' laps. It's the sense that if your house burned down, there would be people around you who would help you get your life back together.
Quite some years ago, my wife and I lived in Fort Collins, CO. We got invited to a party by a couple we knew only casually, through a large, loose social network. It was a grand party on a warm night, and we all took sleeping bags and camped out on their property. He was a tech entrepreneur, and his house was a marvel of passive solar power -- a LOT of power, since he had a lot of computing hardware. He had a small fortune invested in that house.
Some months later, the big fires came through, swept through his property, and took everything except their lives. It was so hot, it reduced a car to a smallish rivulet of metal from the engine block.
My wife and I were saddened and appalled by this, so we went to the bank and opened up a relief fund in their name, then spread the word through their network of friends: send money here. We'd never done that sort of thing before. The response was huge, and it helped them rebuild. But more than that, it let them know they had friends that counted.
From what I've read, the most consistent and reliable source of personal happiness is a good social life. Not drunken Friday Afternoon Clubs, but connections with a network of people you know and care about. It doesn't have to be living in each others' laps. It's the sense that if your house burned down, there would be people around you who would help you get your life back together.
Quite some years ago, my wife and I lived in Fort Collins, CO. We got invited to a party by a couple we knew only casually, through a large, loose social network. It was a grand party on a warm night, and we all took sleeping bags and camped out on their property. He was a tech entrepreneur, and his house was a marvel of passive solar power -- a LOT of power, since he had a lot of computing hardware. He had a small fortune invested in that house.
Some months later, the big fires came through, swept through his property, and took everything except their lives. It was so hot, it reduced a car to a smallish rivulet of metal from the engine block.
My wife and I were saddened and appalled by this, so we went to the bank and opened up a relief fund in their name, then spread the word through their network of friends: send money here. We'd never done that sort of thing before. The response was huge, and it helped them rebuild. But more than that, it let them know they had friends that counted.