Well, not literally! This is the Corona Era and I have not used my passport for 6 months (has that ever happen before ?!).
These days we have to obey medical experts recommending wearing masks and distancing one from the other to prevent infecting loved ones with a potentially fatal infection; and no flying or travelling, but stay at home.
The art of living should induce you to look for the good in the small and close things, to enjoy being together and look at the halffull glass that life has administered you. This is actually what crazed the world a few years ago when the Danish world 'hygge' was proclaimed word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries (2016). As a Dane hygge has an obvious meaning but when you try to translate it into English it becomes troublesome. The New Yorker ran an essay and said hygge is 'a Danish quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or wellbeing'; another definition said hygge is "taking pleasure in the presence of gentle and soothing things'. I believe the better definition is what Louisa Thomsen, herself a Dane, wrote about Hygge as 'a state of mindfulness: how to make essential and mundane tasks dignified, joyful and beautiful, how to live a life connected with loved ones; to emphasize the ideas of simplicity, cheerfulness, reciprocity, community and belonging." Actually Hygge has to come from you and ooze to your friends; you cannot buy it as the Americans or British have tried to do.
Looking at the harsh realities of Israel today: unemployment, no income, no work, political incompetence, demonstrations, violence for the sake of violence, provocations , waiting for the next political murder; a reality that is exactly the opposite of hygge.
So why do I write this?
Well , on the kibbutz we have 'the committee of good mood' - ועדה של מצב רוח
Wow Lone this good