“The Easter egg symbolizes our ability to break out of the hardened, protective shell we’ve surrounded ourselves with.”
~ Siobhan Shaw
Keep your face towards the sunshine and laughter and shadows will fall behind you
Notes On Happiness From An Expert
“I teach a class at the Harvard Business School on happiness. It surprises some people when I tell them this—that a subject like happiness is taught alongside accounting, finance, and other, more traditional MBA fare. Nathaniel Hawthorne once famously said, “Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” This is not exactly the stuff of business administration.” – The Atlantic
Strong and supportive relationships are the number one predictor of wellbeing, across the lifespan. Maintaining those connections during times of crisis and challenge is more important than ever. Feeling isolated from others is strongly related to depression, anxiety and other forms of mental distress. If you can’t catch up with your key supportive people face to face right now, find other ways of doing so. And if you’re not used to using other options such as Skype, Facetime, or social media apps to call, find someone who can demystify and demonstrate these for you.
For many, Easter starts and ends with Jesus, but throughout history, there are strangely similar holidays that predate it. So, it might behove one to climb down from your cross.
It’s Easter again, one of those feasts that over the centuries has combined elements of religion, folklore, superstition and cultural practice. Say what?
Consider this scenario from way back. You’re trying to set up a new religion – Christianity – in new lands and there’s a fair bit of resistance from the locals who, after all, have been doing things a certain way for donkey’s years. In Britain, for example, people had heard about the teachings of Jesus from Roman traders who travelled to their country in the first and second centuries after the death of Christ, but you know, meh.
Then in 597ce, Augustine popped over from Rome to Britain to do some serious converting to the new faith. His was a concerted push to get the word out, but it was an uphill battle, so the early clergy decided to appropriate some festivals and rituals already in play to get their message across. A Spring festival? Mmmm, that will do nicely, thank you.
Spring, of course, marks the end of the cold hard winter months; it’s the season of rebirth, regeneration, bountiful harvests, new life. What better analogy than the resurrection of Jesus to mirror what was happening in nature? But the Easter Bunny? Where’d he come from?
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