Enjoy the Moment

You’ve gotten hygge with it, now check out these other hard-to-translate ways to take a refreshing pause.

La Passeggiata

This Italian tradition translates directly to “the walk,” but it’s so much more than a simple excursion on foot. Italians get dressed up to “ fare la passeggiata” in the evenings on weekends and holidays, when the whole town takes to the streets to see and be seen. While you may find it more comfortable to wear sneakers and stretchy clothes, you can still get the benefit of moving your body, feeling part of your community, and greeting passersby, no matter where and when you fare your own passeggiata

Fika

Translated as a “coffee and cake break,” the Swedish tradition of fika is about more than just getting your daily caffeine fix. Fika can be done at any time of day, and involves sharing a pause with friends, family, or coworkers while savoring a treat. It serves to both strengthen your relationships and give you a break to refresh your mind and body.

Niksen

The Dutch practice of niksen involves doing nothing at all—that’s right, nothing. The idea is to let go of the need to be productive and give yourself permission to simply be in the moment, so you can reduce stress and relieve symptoms of burnout. How exactly do you practice niksen? Try taking a long break to look out the window, listen to music, or sit down.

Grab some fresh air. What’s outside?

Scan the vista for two or three signs of spring.

MINDFUL OR MINDLESS?

Our take on who’s paying attention and who’s not

by AMBER TUCKER

Performance artist David Datuna shocked modern-art aficionados by eating another artist’s installation that had sold for $120K: a banana ducttaped to a gallery wall. “I call the performance ‘Hungry Artist,’ because I was hungry and I just ate it,” he said. Ooookay.

Music tours are hugely profitable, and fossil-fuel-intensive. Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin said the band wants to “turn it around so it’s not so much taking as giving”—announcing they won’t tour again until they can make the process neutral, or even good, for the environment.

In St. Johns County, FL, the public libraries teamed up with EnChroma, which manufactures glasses that let color-blind people see colors normally. The glasses are available for patrons to borrow, just like a book, for up to two weeks.

A PhD candidate at Michigan State created a skirt out of her academic rejection notes—and wore it when she successfully defended her dissertation. “Sitting down...with your rejection letters to make a craft out of them is kind of therapeutic,” she said.

Vaping nicotine isn’t safer than smoking, as a spate of vapingrelated deaths and illnesses have shown. From April 2020, Nova Scotia is the first Canadian province to ban flavored e-cigarettes, which have skyrocketed vaping rates (especially among youth) across North America.

Police fined a Montreal woman $420 for not holding the handrail on a subway station escalator. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who judged the police action as “interference with freedom of movement,” and awarded the woman $20K for all the fuss. ●

Harvard Pilgrim is proud to support the creation of Mindful’s resources for pain, including specialized meditations and reviews of cutting-edge research on how mindfulness can help with pain.

Since 2005, Harvard Pilgrim’s Mind the Moment program and its team of expert instructors have been helping

• organizations bring mindfulness into the workplace

• providers bring mindfulness into the healing process, and

• individuals make mindfulness part of their self-care routine.

Now, we want to bring another sort of support system to anyone dealing with the complexities of chronic pain.

Featuring:

• Experts and researchers on mindfulness for pain

• Stories of healing, brought to you by Christiane Wolf, Steve Hickman, and Barry Boyce

• Meditation practices for pain, led by Tara Healey, Noriko Harth, Luis Morones, and others

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Greyston Bakery makes more than great-tasting brownies. Greyston, New York’s first registered Benefit Corporation, is making an impact on the community, society, and the environment. At the very heart of Greyston’s operations are the tenets of nonjudgment, embracing uncertainty, and loving action. It’s a philosophy that extends beyond the bakery floor into the offices of the executive leadership