The street-community resources grew to include a shared cargo bike, the Hulbert Street Book Exchange (bring a book, take a book) and a pizza oven on wheels (owned by no one yet shared by all), which led to weekly pizza dinners. And goats. Yes, goats. Two houses agreed to take down the fence between their lots and made room for them.
Shared pizza ovens and number of inter-front-lawn-goats are not a bad measure of the strength of a street community, but perhaps the best testimony were the reactions from the street when Shani and Tim had their safe, which held cash, a computer and back-up drives, stolen. Neighbours came by with food and money (one with a note: ‘Here is $500. I am giving it because I can. Please do not give it back’). One neighbour started a Dropbox to help re-establish the files and pictures Shani and Tim had lost. One of the neighbours’ sons gave them a card reading, ‘Life’s disappointments are harder to bear when you don’t know any swear words’ as he gave Shani the first loaf of bread he had ever baked and his entire collection of shells.
‘What would you recommend people do if they want to do what you did?’ I asked Shani.
‘Don’t do anything we did,’ she laughed. ‘Figure out what works for you. What to build your community around. Find out what interests people, what unites people, and build on that. One of my friends started to build a community in his street around tomatoes. Now there are fifteen families coming together each year to can tomatoes.’
There are several things we can learn from Shani’s story. First of all, there is an advantage in being a defined community: Hulbert Street is a cul-de-sac, which means the community is clearly geographically defined. I suspect this is also one of the reasons why islanders often experience a stronger sense of community and identity. Second, we must seek to secure public space that can be used – a closed street works because there is no through traffic, but so does a common piece of green space. Third, one of the most powerful motivators is dreams. Martin Luther King did not give an ‘I have a nightmare’ speech and, in Hulbert Street, what sparked the community efforts was Shani’s question about what people would like to see their street be. Or, in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince:
‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.’
HAPPINESS TIP:
TAKE A STREET AND TURN IT INTO A COMMUNITY
Bring your local community together by creating a directory to share skills and resources.
Be like Shani and the community at Hulbert Street and start by building connections with your neighbours. Knocking on a neighbour’s door for the first time may be terrifying for some, but the rewards can be big.
You could create a directory for the street or the stairway, ask whether they have some books they would like to donate for the mini-library you are setting up or whether they would like to take part in establishing a community garden in the neighbourhood.
The most important thing is to start talking with your neighbours, to learn their names, find out their skills, interests and needs and build a community around them – a community that is as unique as the people who live in your street.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE HAPPINESS
Think of a time when you felt happy or – feel free to tone it down a bit – a time you felt good, or laughed or smiled. Bring that memory to mind and try to remember the details of the situation.
Odds are you thought of a memory where you were together with other people. Mine is sitting in a cabin after a day of skiing, surrounded by friends, with a fire in the fireplace and whisky in my glass.
I have asked audiences across the world to think of good times and, more often than not, people are with other people in their memories. This proves nothing about the importance of people when it comes to happiness. However, people have an easier time remembering numbers and data if we give them some scenes to attach them to.
So, what does the evidence say? Well, if we look at the link with how often people meet socially with friends, colleagues or relatives, we see a clear pattern. The more often people meet, the happier they are. However, one thing is quantity, another thing is quality.
How often do you meet socially with friends, relatives or colleagues?
How many people are there with whom you can discuss intimate and personal matters?
Source: European Social Survey, 7th Wave
I cannot be the only one who has felt lonely in a crowded room. We may see and meet other people, but the important thing is whether we connect. Do I get you? Do you get me? Do you trust me enough to let your guard down, to let me know what is really on your mind? To let me in? We also see this reflected in the numbers. The more people we have with whom we can talk about personal matters, the happier we are.
So, loneliness is bad for happiness. Mind-blowing, right? More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle pointed out that man is a social animal; and, in the 1940s, Maslow’s pyramid of human needs showed how love and belonging come just after basic safety and physiological needs.
Today, modern happiness research using big data echoes those findings. What the UN World Happiness Report shows us is that roughly three quarters of the difference in the happiness levels between the countries of the world comes down to six factors.
One of them is social support. We will look at the other five in the chapters to come. Social support is measured by asking whether people have somebody they can rely on in times of need. It is a binary and very crude way of measuring it, but we have data on it from around the globe, and it does determine happiness levels.
Fortunately, across the countries in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), 88 per cent of people believe that they know someone they could rely on in a time of need. People in New Zealand, Iceland and Denmark feel most secure. In these countries, 95 per cent or above believe their friends have their back in times of need, while people in Hungary, Korea and Mexico report the lowest level of confidence with 82, 76 and 75 per cent, respectively.
A couple of years ago, I called my bank to see if I could borrow some money to buy a place to live. When I said that I studied happiness for a living, the man on the other end of the line went awfully quiet. Long story short, I was in my mid-thirties, single, and spent the next couple of months on my friend’s couch with his two cats. You know, living the dream. But I didn’t despair: I knew people had my back.
HAPPINESS TIP:
DO IT LIKE THE DUTCH – CELEBRATE NEIGHBOURS’ DAY
Make the effort to speak to your neighbours. Meet them for a coffee, help them in the shared garden or just stop to chat the next time you see them.
According to a Dutch proverb, it is better to have a good neighbour than a distant friend. Since 2006, the Dutch have celebrated National Neighbours’ Day on 26 May. It started as an initiative to get neighbours together and has grown to become an event which is celebrated in two thousand Dutch districts. It was inspired by a survey which showed that three out of four Dutch people found that neighbourhoods which engaged in regular activities were the most pleasant to live in and was initiated by the Dutch coffee company, Douwe Egberts, to get neighbours together. Later on, Douwe Egberts collaborated with the Oranjefonds, which has since 2008 provided neighbourhoods with funds to celebrate the annual day. Celebrations can range from holding a street party to having a cup of coffee with neighbours you might not usually socialize with. Make a special effort on 26 May next year to say hello to your neighbours, or invite them over for a hot drink.
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BOWLING TOGETHER