Things like Alaska Airlines door plugs popping off make reading "The Meaning of Life is Surprisingly Simple" even more meaningful. It boils down to making "your quest for meaning manageable by breaking it down into three bite-size dimensions.," according to The Atlantic's regular columnist Arthur Brooks, who's also a Harvard professor. Brooks wrote that "knowing your life's meaning" is called "presence" in psychological circles, and "the drive to look for it 'search'." Presence, like everything human, varies among people, and "some people low in presence don't bother searching – they are stuck." The manageable dimensions he wrote about were defined by psychologists Frank Martela and Michael Steger as Coherence (seeing "how events fit together"), Purpose ("the belief that you are alive to do something … your personal mission statement"), and Significance ("the sense that your life matters"). Of course, that's easier said than done and can take a lifetime.
The Dutch have different paths to affirm life's meaning: gezellig and niksen. According to "Gezellig — A Word That Encompasses the Heart of Dutch Culture," a dutchamsterdam.nl article, gezellig (pronounced "heh-SELL-ick") is an untranslatable feeling that "includes everything from cozy to friendly, from comfortable to relaxing, and from enjoyable to gregarious." The article cites Wikipedia's definition: "Literally, it means cozy, quaint, or nice, but can also connote time spent with loved ones, seeing a friend after a long absence, or general togetherness." For example, "an evening on the town with friends is gezellig, especially if you have dinner at a gezellig restaurant, see a good movie, and finish with a drink at a gezellig pub. Trying to entertain the inlaws-from-hell is definitely not gezellig."
Rather than being socially cozy, time.com's Sophia Gottfried wrote that the opposing Dutch term for intentionally being by yourself, niksen, means " 'literally means to do nothing, to be idle or doing something without any use,' says Carolien Hamming, managing director of CSR Centrum, a coaching center in the Netherlands …. Practicing niksen could be as simple as just hanging around, looking at your surroundings or listening to music — 'as long as it's without purpose,' she says, and not done in order to achieve something or be productive."
But gestures help determining if a Dutch person is feeling gezellig or niksen without shamelessly. Gestures vary between individuals, but some gestures occur only in certain cultural settings while others are nearly universal. In ancient Greece the gesture known as "euphemia," meant "ritual silence," according to an online article from Hellenismo, and was indicated by the "right index finger resting on the lips." Harpocrates (no relation to Grouchocrates) was the Greek god of silence, and while some might suppose that Harpocrates was particularly worshipped by ancient Greek librarians, they'd be wrong since all library visitors read aloud to themselves. Active libraries wsere filled with vocal rumblings. Nevertheless, small Egyptian effigies of Harpocrates show him with his index fingertip just below his lips, not touching them in the prototypical librarian gesture.
Chironomia is "the art of using hand gestures to good effect in traditional rhetoric or oratory," according to Wikipedia, who notes the term was coined by Gilbert Austin in his 1806 book by that title. He was an Irish minister, inventor and headmaster of a "school for privileged young men" where he emphasized learning the specific use of certain gestures to amplify the speakers' messages. Austin said speakers should avoid "vulgarity and rusticality," so his posturings avoided the Roman orator's gesture called the "digitus impudicus" that's still indicated with a "clenched fist and raised middle finger," according to the National Institute of Health article by Benjamin Bergen, "Do Gestures Retain Mental Associations with Their Iconic Origins." Another article, "An Illustrated Guide to Mouth Gestures and Their Meanings Around the World," from MIT Press, stated that touching one's lips with the forefinger is the near-universal sign for silence, while in the Arab world placing one's thumb in the mouth "and quickly suck at it" means "misery, lack of money," and back in the Netherlands "to thrust one's thumb into the mouth, inflate the cheeks, and blow" indicates "indifference, defiance."
Meanwhile, joining the fingertips of both hands together on the lips shows "thought, reflection," according to MIT, but when Germany's former Chancellor Angela Merkel couldn't decide where to place her hands during a 2002 photo shoot, she joined her fingertips near her tummy and it became her personal brand known as the "Merkel Rhombus," (or "Merkel-Raute" in German) with a rhombus being an equilateral parallelogram. As described in "The Merkel Rhombus: How a Hand Gesture Became a Brand," she "offered her own explanation of how the gesture had come about. 'It's about the question of where to put your arms,' said the trained physicist, adding that the rhombus also showed 'a certain love of symmetry'." France24.com added "Hands clasped in front of the stomach, thumbs and fingertips touching to form a diamond shape -- Angela Merkel's 'rhombus' hand gesture has become almost as famous as the German chancellor herself. It has its own Wikipedia page and even its own emoticon, '<>'."
Ron DeSantis tried to use her rhombus during a recent candidate debate. "A Former FBI Agent Analyzed Ron DeSantis' and Nikki Haley's Body Language," a Politico.com article by Joe Navarro, the former FBI agent, wrote that "The candidates spent much of the debate calling one another liars. Early on, DeSantis did it with confidence. I could tell from the way he steepled his fingers as he said that Haley couldn't be trusted. Hand steeples are a sign of self-assurance: Each hand supports the other, fingertip to fingertip — a subconscious way of saying, 'I know what I am talking about …. Unfortunately for DeSantis, he dropped it too soon, and the podium partially obstructed his hands, diminishing the effect."
For an excellent examples of pervasive universal gesture, look no further than soccer (football in the rest of the world) and the "head cradle." Having played in hundreds of soccer games and viewed thousands more, almost every time some doofus misses kicking the ball into a wide-open goal, he grabs, or, if you prefer, cradles, his head in a clear "oh no!" gesture, as do his teammates, his coaches, and the fans. It happens in all sorts of games all over the world. Lately it seems that rude, cruel, and nasty gestures are the norm. That was certainly the case recently with Solano County, California librarian Mychel Threets who's known for his high energy and colorful wardrobe. He has "hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram" where he relentlessly but humorously promotes reading and libraries among young people, according to "Librarian Faced Spate of Insults. Thousands of People Came to His Defense, "a Washington Post article by Sydney Page.
"Libraries are so much more than books," said Threets, who is known for his high energy and colorful wardrobe. "It's a place that's there for you. The doors are open. The library is for everybody."
Apparently podcaster Josh Lekach doesn't think so. Page wrote that "he made the critical post on X — where he has 47,000 followers — as a reaction to Threets's social media videos, which he called 'bizarre and performative'." The post went viral and thousands of mean, dismissive, and cruel messages appeared on Threet's smartphone as he was attending his grandmother's funeral. Fortunately, he'd already gotten messages from friends warning him what Lekach had inspired. Then "the tide turned for Threets when people came to his defense. There were friends and fans — as well as complete strangers. 'Incredible, you took a guy who is passionate about his job of being a librarian and trying to encourage adults and kids to read more/get a library card....and somehow made it negative,; one person commented. '"Doesn't get any weirder than trying to shame someone for being enthusiastic about learning and uplifting activities," someone else commented.' another person commented. "Those millions who disagreed with my benign post are wrong," Lekach wrote to the Post.
Wouldn't hurt Lekach to ponder Threet's approach to facing down ill-willed negativity. "Sometimes the best way to respond to people who level insults is with empathy. I hope those people have a much better day tomorrow. I hope they experience kindness. I hope they experience joy. I hope they remember that they still belong at the library. I hope better days are ahead of them."
No comments:
Post a Comment