Here’s the latest installment in our ongoing series of “MakeBeliefs to Help U Smile & Feel J_Y!’’ to provide comfort and hope to young and old who are feeling distressed and anxious in our too fast-changing and sometimes unforgiving world. It’s our way of making things better by helping you imagine! I created these MakeBeliefs to find hope. If you find value in the MakeBeliefs project, please share this newsletter with someone you care about.
I recently attended a conference on helping deal with the mental health issues of teens and came away with the need expressed there for parents, school counselors, social workers and other support staff to help students become their full true selves, however that may be.
I think this attitude is based on the belief that each of us has the right and the ability to become the fullest we can be as human beings and take our place in the world. I look back at my own childhood and recall the uncertainty I felt at the time about who I was and how I would be in the world. Could I even cope with what was out there? Could I survive a family situation wrought with friction and unhappiness?
Like each of us, as I grew older I tried my best to strengthen myself and become my best person, even with my all too many defects. Some days, now, I feel I have succeeded, other days I fear I fall short. But I try as best as I can to lead a decent and usual life.
But, say, how do you feel? Are you the most or best you can be? Where would you actually like to be if you’re not there already? How can we help others be their best, too?
(You can see other makebeliefs in our Smiles series at: https://makebeliefscomix.com/printables_categories/smile/ )
Wow, Imagine! There’s Now an International Happiness Day
I just learned from NPR that International Day of Happiness was celebrated on March 20. The United Nations proclaimed this day in 2012 at the request of Bhutan, a country that actually releases its own annual happiness index.
So what does it mean to have such a day? "It's a day to be happy, of course!" the U.N. says — "a way to recognize the importance of happiness in the lives of people around the world."
Then I remembered seeing some photos recently that brought smiles to my face and helped make me see things more positively than I had been doing so, considering the terrible current world events of war and hunger. Here are three such ‘’happiness’’ photos.
In the first one, according to the 2o23 Sony World Photography Awards, "Children weave in and out of scores of giant cones, or topas, as they roll a wagon around a rice processing plant. The cart is used by workers to carry rice and put it down for drying, but after they have finished with it, the children use it as a toy to play with. More than 30 children turned this rice mill in Bahmanbaria, Bangladesh, into an obstacle course."
What ‘’gets’’ to me about this photo is that as difficult and harsh as these children’s lives may be working in the plant at all hours, somehow their innate sense of joy of life still pervades. They can find joy in the simplest act of moving their wagons for a race. Extraordinary, isn’t it? If only we knew how to keep that joy, to manifest it at harsh points in our lives!
In the second photo Indigenous Bolivian women ride bicycles during a cholita race in El Alto, Bolivia. They are wearing their traditional skirts as they ride – think of the freedom and joy, the exuberance that comes as they fly on their bikes and the wind flows over their faces. This is an amazing sight of women whose lives I am sure must be difficult.
And in the third photo, from National Public Radio Daily, Izna and Saba and friends dance with joy for the high tide and the rains of the monsoon season, bringing relief to Mumbai from summer heat. They're members of Mumbai's transgender, or Hijra, community, which faces prejudice and discrimination. Says photographer Viraj Nayar, "Photographing and interacting with these friends was a reminder to me to not only have gratitude for the larger and more significant events in my life, but of the smaller everyday moments of life as well. Also, that both happiness and gratitude are interlinked and best when experienced and shared with others." Well said, no?
Have you recently seen a photo or event which contributed to your happiness, too? Please share what you saw – or even what you would hope to see. Why shouldn’t every day be an International Day of Happiness? How can we make that so? Is this such an impossible question?
Thank You So Very Much, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for Calling Out Antisemitism
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