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Saturday, December 14 2024

Interpersonal connection, spiritual fulfillment and the feeling of being at home: Happiness comes in many forms and is translated differently across cultures. Understanding contextual happiness, however, comes down to you as an individual and your own unique life experiences.

FORMS OF HAPPINESS

happiness (Imager via Pixabay)
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

The shapes and sizes that well-being can embody are extensive.

However, the main forms of happiness such as excitement, joy, love, humor, pride, optimism, gratitude and fulfillment are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

As a result of individualism and contextual lifestyles, these core types of happiness are sub-categorized into feelings that can sometimes be hard to identify. In other words, cross-cultural understanding of these diverse feelings depends on your own worldview and emotional/linguistic intelligence.

The main forms of happiness such as excitement, joy, love, humor, pride, optimism, gratitude and fulfillment are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement in understanding happiness, with experts currently studying well-being in new, profound ways.

THE LANGUAGE OF HAPPINESS

When it comes to the language of happiness, a positive psychologist at the University of East London named Tim Lomas may be able to give us some clarification. Within Lomas’ website, he discusses positive lexicography and The Happy Words Project.

This project studies a collection of untranslatable words interrelated to various forms of happiness across global languages. For example, “ohanami” is a Japanese word illustrating gathering to enjoy and appreciate cherry blossoms, while “fjaka” is a Croatian word emphasizing the feeling of ultimate relaxation.

Within the foundation of this project, Lomas argues that studying various lexicons to understand happiness can amplify these feelings within us.

“Ohanami” is a Japanese word illustrating gathering to enjoy and appreciate cherry blossoms, while “fjaka” is a Croatian word emphasizing the feeling of ultimate relaxation.

To learn more about Lomas and his project, check out his TEDxTalk below.

UNDERSTANDING A TCK’s HAPPINESS

In a discussion with Ruth van Reken, author of “Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds,”she states that understanding contextual happiness is complex and sometimes hard to grasp. This is especially the case when considering all TCKs as a whole.

Van Reken tells us that:

Just as every TCK has a uniuqe upbringing, their perceptions and comprehension of happiness are just as individual.

Happiness photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash
Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

Though, it is notable to point out that, just as most TCKs develop similar feelings of loss and identity confusion, they also share equivalent feelings of connection and social satisfaction when interacting with other TCKs.

In addition, these specific shared feelings are exclusive to TCK themselves. This is because the emotions associated with their upbringing are only understood by each other.

In the end, Reken mentions that her happiness stems from aspects of her life, like it does for us all.

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About Author

charrison

Cecelia Harrison is an intercultural woman raised in northern Wisconsin by two military B.R.A.T.s/navy veterans. Her cross-cultural upbringing is what initially developed her interest in publications like Culturs, which embodies the idea of expanding its reader’s worldview. Harrison is an aspiring cultural anthropologist who has a passion to spread the concept of cultural relativism; broadcasting traits of openness, curiosity and understanding when learning or experiencing differing cultures. She intends to share her research and knowledge about cultural elements like religion, beliefs, customs, practices, social norms and ethics, and how they interpret/relate globally to each other.

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