It's the little things... This is my new insight about happiness, fun, and play. Developing new friendships, and flirting. Continuing an almost three-year daily email conversation with a loved one. A piece of music that makes you stop what you're doing and daydream. Bantering back and forth with a Scrabble partner. The sight of your daughter dancing to pop songs and seeing what a lovely and vibrant young woman she's becoming. Soaking in the creativity and liveliness that your son expresses. The anticipation of good friends coming to visit. Being in "the zone" as you try new ski techniques that a friend has taken the time to share with you. Reconnecting with an old friend that you thought you were growing away from. Being alone in your house for the entire weekend and you start to go a little batty and take pictures of your feet in various settings. So many blessings. This is what keeps me going... what makes it all not so mundane and makes life worthwhile.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Vermont is taking big steps in cultivating happiness!!
Well, to fill in a little space (since I am still slacking!) here's an old post I wrote for my work at the Center for an Agricultural Economy. Although it's not about play, it's about happiness, which is related. Enjoy!
Vermont
is taking big steps in cultivating happiness!!
By Heather Davis, Food Systems Monitoring and Evaluation
Research Associate at the Center for an Agricultural Economy
June 11th, 2012
Happiness. What does it really look like? How do we achieve it? How do we measure it? Where does responsibility lie in
achieving this state? With us as
individuals? With the state to
support policies that will enhance happiness and well-being? Or both? These are the questions that Vermonters are now asking themselves
due to a new law passed this year, S.237,
which calls for the State of Vermont to measure the well-being of its
citizens. The indicators and the
associated data that are being developed for this state initiative will be a
real asset in decision-making; for the state budget, for local businesses and
organizations, in creating laws and policy, and for individuals in making
decisions about their own lives.
This is exciting and progressive stuff!
On May 30th, I spent the day at the University of
Vermont attending the Measuring What
Matters: Pathways to Sustainable Well-Being in Vermont conference,
sponsored by the Gund Institute for
Ecological Economics, Gross National
Happiness USA, and Common Good Vermont. I am a data geek and I love measures,
so the idea of measuring our well-being in a way that is more representative
and accurate than the traditional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) method really
appeals to me. Monitoring progress
toward goals is the only way we can really know if we are really making our way
toward those goals – and what a more worthwhile goal than happiness! This conference was really up my alley!
After some wonderful speakers, there was some great
discussion in the break-out group I attended addressing the question of
measuring well-being. Some of the
words that emerged to describe happiness and well-being include “Thriving,”
“Community,” “Time balance,” “Resiliency,” “Work-life balance,”
“Relationships,” “Access to nature,” and “Basic needs,” and “Maslow’s Hierarchy
of Needs.”
After
coming up with the definition of happiness and well-being, the next step will
be to develop ways to measure these things. This can be the more difficult part of the process: it’s
very important to find the right measures (indicators) – if you measure the
wrong thing, you’ll get misleading results and/or the information will not be
useful at all. This problem can be
seen in the over-emphasis of measuring GDP. The U.S. and other countries have generally focused on this
measure – which describes the total sum of all economic activity – and have
used it to tell us how “well” a nation is doing. This approach is very problematic for many reasons – not the
least of which is that our well-being goes far beyond economics. Yes, economics is an important part of
well-being – to a
point – but there are many more factors that we need to pay attention to,
such as those mentioned above. If
one of these factors is languishing we need to do something to address it –
both as individuals and collectively as a community, state, or nation. This is why measuring the elements that
contribute to happiness is so important – “What you measure affects what you do.
If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing” -Nobel
Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz.
The idea of measuring
well-being, beyond the traditional and problematic measure of GDP, began in
Bhutan in 1972 when the new young king, Jigme Singye
Wangchuck, declared that his country would be measuring the Gross National Happiness of
his people, which was a more well-rounded way to measure well-being. It has taken some time (Bhutan was way
ahead of the curve here), but the idea has caught on in recent years and
several other countries, states, the UN
have now begun the process of measuring well-being in a more holistic way.
Now, Vermont is part of this progressive group and will be
measuring the well-being of its citizens.
This conference was the first step in this process.
How does measuring
happiness and well-being relate to the work I do at the Center for an Agricultural Economy
(CAE) and the general work of the organization? The CAE’s mission is to, “bring together community resources and programs needed to develop a
locally based food system that supports the desire of rural communities to
rebuild their economic and ecological health.” We, as an organization, must reflect on why we want
to develop the local food system in the first place? What are our intended outcomes of doing so? We need to have a vision of the larger
impacts of our work. What benefits
does our work have for individual citizens and the community as a whole?
There are four main outcomes of a healthy food system that
have developed through my work here and are also reflected in other
work that I have come across in my research, which also happen to reflect
well-being, in general:
·
Healthy Communities
·
Robust & Equitable Local Economy
·
Food Security
·
Healthy Environment
A portion of my work here
at the CAE has been measuring the health of the local food system and the
well-being of the Hardwick-area.
My Master’s Thesis, A Framework for
Monitoring Local and Regional Food Systems, which I worked on while here at
the CAE, took a holistic approach to measuring the health of food systems and
includes all the various elements that make up a food system (Farms, Food Waste
Recycling, Processing, etc), as well as those four outcomes. This also includes measures on well-being
to reflect “Healthy Communities” as one of the intended outcomes of a healthy
food system. Some of the specific
indicators relating to this that were developed include:
· Percent
of respondents who participate in bartering
· Percent
of farms who participate in bartering
· # of Buffalo
Mountain Co‐op members (total members & working members)
· # of
members of North Country Farming Network
· Percent
of registered voters who voted in most recent mid‐term election
· Percent
of respondents who indicated that they currently volunteer
· Average
score on community satisfaction index
· Average
score on the “Well‐being Index”
· Homeownership
rate
· Crimes
against property: Number of property crimes / 1000 pop.
· Crimes
against people: Number of crimes against people / 1000 pop.
The intentions of the above
indicators (there are a total of 200+) are to get an accurate sense of
community vitality, engagement, and well-being. Other indicators look specifically at details relating to
farming, food processing, etc. The
data for this portion of the larger framework is being collected from area
organizations, state and federal data sources and via community survey.
In rural areas where farming is
integral to the community - and even in more urban areas where we’re seeing the
development of more urban agriculture and increased engagement in the
production of food – we need to consider the health of the food system when
considering our greater well-being, and vice versa. Food is one of our basic human needs and for true well-being
we need to have healthy food and a healthy food system.
The Measuring What Matters Conference and these
conversations will be part of the ongoing process of creating the
state-mandated well-being index for Vermont. It really is exciting to see this coming together – another
way that this small and humble state is leading the way!
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