Hi-ooo-gah!

Have you heard of this before? The word is actually spelled Hygge, but pronounces Hi-ooo-gah, and is a Danish mindset that the cold should not just be survived, but rather savored.  My friend Katie shared the article and I love the concept. To really sink into winter, not try to wish it away. To use this time to intentionally slow down, cuddle up, to stay put, to reflect and to be still.

I've read the article three times now, and I love it. "Hygge may be the best example of one people’s power of positive thinking, promoting as it does a mindset that life should be savored, not survived, and that comfort, beauty, and internal and external warmth are the keys to a rich existence on the frozen tundra."

Hygge is a reflective time, apparently lasting the whole winter. It is about candles in windows, quilts piled high, hot drinks, crackling fires and sharing kind community with each other. They even try to avoid divisive issues during the dark season.

It's making the decision to slow down. To be still. It's a shift, because I think I've been led to believe that business is a virtue. That to be busy means you're important and making life count. In college we used to rattle off all of the papers and tests and group projects we had to do, a sort of competitive one-up game that led me to believe being busy was important. But I'm realizing now that being busy is not not a virtue. And it certainly does not make you important.

Our stove is helping us find our Hygge this winter, and it is awesome. We all seem to congregate in that room now. The practice of building a new fire, turning over a log, or adding new logs has become a daily practice in paying attention, keeping watch, tending and as a result, staying warm. We have gone many days in a row without turning our furnace on and this little stove has quickly become the heart of the home.

I believe in this hygge thing. My whole perspective has shifted from merely getting through this cold (and it's been terribly cold!) season to now enjoying what it means to hunker down, slow down and quiet down.  So go make some tea, light a candle, get yourself under a quilt, pull out a Little House book and sink into the season of Hygge.