“Look at those twinkly lights daddy!”
That was 2 weeks ago when I was cycling home with the rest of the Purvis gang, whizzing past cosy Danish homes in our neighbourhood.
It gets dark from 3:30 pm at this time of year. That might not sound so bad, yet consider it doesn’t really get light until after 8 am.
So we don’t see as much natural light nowadays, and when we do it’s a dim grey light from a low sun. A sun trying its best to push its rays through thick winter cloud.
We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love
Hygge is an important part of Danish life.
Hygge (pronounced hue-guh or hoo-gah depending on whom you ask or what website you visit) is a Danish word. A word used to acknowledge a feeling or moment, whether alone or with friends, at home or away, ordinary or extraordinary.
It’s cosy and most of all charming.
For much of the western world, Hygge has become a familiar term, with popular books and articles being written on the subject (Danish & Scandi living has a huge following in the UK & US recently).
‘Let’s put our twinkly lights up now’ said my son as we pulled into our driveway.
So in we all went and out came our twinkly fairy lights. We put them in lantern jars, on bushes in the garden and hanging on the bunk bed in our children’s bedroom.
It’s all very cosy.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity
When I think of people sitting at home with blankets over their knees I picture elderly people watching TV or reading the paper.
That’s never going to be me I used to think.
Yet here I am in our home, with a grey IKEA fleece blanket across my legs. My wife and kiddos are the same and yet it’s not cold in our house…
Our fairy lights are on and candles lit and we’re playing Old Maid (the card game) around the dining table.
It turns out cosiness isn’t just for the elderly.
Yet real Hygge is more than twinkly lights, candles and those grey fleece blankets from IKEA.
It’s about togetherness, connectedness and quality time with yourself or others.
I recently learned that a startup created a box for people to put their phones in when together. It’s a box that blocks signals so phone disturbance isn’t possible.
It’s called Breadblox and looks pretty stylish. Yet being stylish is all it really is.
It costs a lot more than everyone simply putting their phone onto aeroplane mode.
Hygge was never meant to be translated, it was meant to be felt
Hygge doesn’t require a purchase of anything. You don’t even need twinkly lights or candles. It’s a state of mind, it’s a philosophy for better living, better living we can all benefit from.
I’m learning Hygge means being in the moment. It means connecting and staying connected to yourself, your surroundings or those you enjoy spending time with.
So no phones, no devices, just people, nature or conversation, and most of all cosiness.
You don’t need an expensive box to block your phone. You just need discipline, curiosity and the mindfulness to enjoy simple moments every day.
Hygge is like a good hug, but without the physical contact
In our home, our kids love to light the candles, turn on the fairy lights and get to work on their Lego. If that isn’t a demonstration of Hygge I don’t know what is.
Do you have small moments that make a big difference in how you live, feel and interact?
If you don’t, chances are you’d benefit from embracing Hygge into your life.
It’s making all the difference in mine.
Now, where did I put that fleece blanket?
“You cannot buy the right atmosphere or a sense of togetherness. You cannot hygge if you are in a hurry or stressed out, and the art of creating intimacy cannot be bought by anything but time, interest and engagement in the people around you.” ― Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well
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See you next time for Episode 13.
Who am I? I lead software engineering teams at Unity Technologies, the realtime development platform of choice for video games, movies and more.
I write on LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/marcuspurvis