‘The Book of Hygge’ by Louisa Thomsen Brits is a lovely little book if you’re looking for an introduction to the concept of hygge, which I’ve been exploring for a while now. It’s essential for giving winter an aspect of enjoyment, something I never quite found before, and once I did it made a miraculous difference. Hygge has a lot of mindfulness to it, more confirmation that this is the right moment for making a time and place for it.
Lighting a candle, making a cup of tea, snuggling into a cozy blanket, and popping open a book are easy ways to decompress from a difficult day, or begin the morning in a gentle way. Life was once about crafting glamorous and sparkling events, when it perhaps should have been about finding the glamour and sparkle among the daily motions we go through. Those magic event moments were few and far between, but a candle and a spot of tea can be conjured every single day. Isn’t it better to enjoy things on a daily basis rather than once in a great while?
Observance writes the texts of our lives, creating stories to be shared in other hyggelige situations when we conjure the moment again. Traditions and rituals vary from one household and one culture to the next, but the desire to celebrate life unites us all. Through our thirst for connection, our future is created one gathering, one encounter, one moment at a time. Hygge rekindles our awareness of the importance and pleasure of mutuality and celebrates our interconnectedness. It keeps us engaged with the lifelong task of living in intimate and loving relation to the world around us. We pass on the spirit of hygge through the quality of our presence. Ideas and values travel. Through hygge, each one of us can know a sense of deeper contentment that will radiate out from us into a global web of belonging togetherness. – Louisa Thomsen Brits
