As one of my low energy happiness practices I try to remember to silently wish everybody I encounter happiness, joy and laughter. It feels good to want the people around you to be happy. I forget a lot but I’ve found it’s a great way to pass the time when you are waiting for something.
This week I had an adventure. I met up with friends I knew from university for a short get together in Birmingham (about 50 miles away). This involved a bus journey, a train journey and one of my friends picking me up and dropping me off at the station in Birmingham.
I encountered lots of people during the journey to and from, and mostly my wishes were sent out ‘en masse’. But when I will still fresh in the morning I had a lot of fun on the bus into town. The bus was relatively full of elderly people (the was a lot of white hair around). I decided I would pass the time focusing my attention on each one individually and wishing them happiness joy and laughter. To deepen the experience, I aim to visualise each person having fun and laughing.
I don’t know what got into me, but I was in rather a mischievous mood. Perhaps it was because I’d also been out to the theatre to watch the National Dance Company of Wales perform the previous night and I had dance on my mind, but I started visualising my fellow companions experiencing joy through dance. It occurred to me that many of them would have enjoyed dance at some time in their life, and I went around the bus imagining each person joyfully smiling and laughing while they enjoyed a different kind dance. I saw the little old lady two rows ahead picking up her knees and flicking her feet about in a fast Irish dance, the white haired woman on the front seat was swinging with a partner, the smartly dressed man to the side of me was gracefully spinning around the floor in a waltz and the tall man in the flat cap…..let’s just say he was wearing tights!
Seeing each person’s joy in my head and recognising that all these elderly people had a past full of interests and passions gave me a lovely feeling. But I also have to admit to a great deal of amusement from some of the mental images I conjured up too!
A small favour: I’d be really grateful if you could you rate this article using the stars below the related posts. Many thanks!
