Communities equal Happiness

It’s been 10 days since the elections in the USA. From my experience with friends and strangers, anxiety and depression levels are way up. Many people are afraid of what might happen because of the election. Literally millions of people have been traumatized by the news.

At Happy Community Project and Good Neighbour Builders Society, we have been working hard to enable communities to come together in a more connected and supportive way. This is important so that individuals and communities as a whole have the social, mental and physical support they need when trauma strikes.

One reaction people can do when traumatized is retreat into isolation and cocoon from all the noise. After all we are independent and are supposed to be strong enough to deal with stuff like this. We believe that a healthier response is to reach out to each other in support. Although we can’t know for sure what will happen and how it may affect us and our children, we can know that when we form communities of support, we can also know that we are not alone.

In communal support, perhaps we can learn that we are more powerful than we believe. That we have everything we need in our collective to be happy and realistically hopeful. Perhaps we can learn that our true independence and freedom is in our interdependency. And through our interdependency, we can collectively build our own future of happiness?

I know this is true amongst the team at Happy Community Project. Together, we are more energized than ever to making it normal that neighbours know each other, care about and support each other. We believe that in these communities of belonging, our societal fabric will become strong enough to resist or accommodate what ever may come our way.

If you are feeling traumatized by the recent events, and don’t have people close by to turn to, perhaps we can help you strengthen your community by making it a community of belonging.

barry@happycommunityproject.com