It’s a tough time for libraries, and people in customer service. And while we don’t want to veer into any toxic positivity, it is good to spend a little time focused on building your happiness level. We are not going to solve people’s serious mental issues here. But bringing some happiness skills to your week can be helpful to everyone!
Mondays can be a little hard, even when things are going fine. Use this small injection of a happiness skill to your week. We are here to support you, and to help you to be a little happier in the library.
You know this: being on social media makes you depressed. It makes you anxious. You generally feel worse the more time you spend on it. To a lesser extent, this is true of all technology. You will often be happier if you watch movies in a theater with others than if you watch it alone at home on a laptop screen. You will be happier if you do exercise in a class than if you watch another exercise video. You will be happier talking about books with a nice person in the library than you will be talking about the book on Goodreads.
You know this. It’s not news. But maybe today is the day you choose to set down your phone (only for a short time!), and affirmatively decide to go talk to someone instead of doom-scrolling yet again.
Check out this excerpt from the article Harvard Study Reveals the One Thing That Makes Humans Happy. Why Are You Doing the Complete Opposite?
“Humans are an intensely social species. It’s literally a matter of life and death. In our ancestral past, if we suddenly became isolated and pushed out by the tribe, it would have meant our inevitable death. So, the behaviors responsible for ensuring social connection — and therefore success in life — would have had a strong selective pressure. They still do.
Technology, and modern life more generally, “gets written down as the progress of man”, to quote my favorite folk singer, John Prine. But consider the unintended consequence of this futuristic world we live in: We are spending more time alone than we have in all of human history. And it’s making us terribly unhappy.
I hope the irony isn’t lost on you. We carry near infinite knowledge on a machine that fits in our front pocket, we fly into space, we enter into alternative realities … but we do all this with an increasing frown and furrowed brow. We’ve never been more advanced. We’ve never been more miserable.
We need to look to the future and be intentional about the societies and cultures we want to build. We need to facilitate the natural urge to connect, belong, and socialize. Our technologies, city infrastructures, governmental and corporate organizations, and the way we do business should always take into account the fact that we humans can survive only by connecting with each other. Our “metrics for success” should capture that. Otherwise, we’ll end up with an incredibly advanced society — with little happiness and humanity left.”
CMLE can be part of your support network; we are here for you, and support you in your library work. Take a nice deep breath in, and whoosh it out; it’s going to be okay today.