Happiness

Wednesday, early to the market in the Grote Markt as usual, pulling the old-lady-bag-on-wheels which may or may not be called a caddy. Three young teenage boys, importantly engaged in Doing A Survey, stopped me and finding me unresponsive in Dutch, one asked in English, ‘What makes you happy?’ ‘Living in Bruges makes me happy,’ I responded immediately after which a brief but interesting conversation ensued. We finished agreeing that friends and family, active social connections, formed the basis of happiness. I spoke to their teacher, hovering in the background, saying what a great idea it was to ask teenagers to survey others’ opinions. On anything really.

 My former home

But that all caused me to ponder about happiness. My immediate answer had been true; I am quite extraordinarily happy living here, having uprooted willingly and without much forethought, from over thirty years of contented living in a much-loved house in Wye, a beautiful village in Kent. As I came here alone, knowing virtually no one, that was quite a risky venture though that fact did not occur to me at the time. I didn’t consider the possible downside; just felt I was engaging in a little, elderly adventure which would be fun to do. Which makes me think that achieving happiness is at least, in part, down to genetic make-up. When I moved to Brugge, I expected to enjoy living here and if that had not happened, I was quite confident in my ability to deal well with NOT being happy here. Money is needed in sufficient, though not prodigal, amounts; one needs enough to buy freedom from worry about the basics in life like housing, food, living expenses but no more. But an optimistic nature is invaluable and that is chiefly gifted at birth. Certainly I don't think my early life experiences were particularly awash with optimism; anxiety was often paramount.

 Cafune in Academiestraat

Researchers estimate that much of happiness is under personal control. Regularly indulging in small pleasures seems to maintain the happy state so, in my case, the weekly coffee morning for English ex-pat women in Hotel Martin’s; the Saturday morning coffee with English newspaper at Cafune; the weekly sessions of Mah Jong which I love, all help me to keep happy. Writing my weekly blog is a continuing interest as I struggle to take or find photographs to illustrate it and indeed, to decide what to write about. It is a little weekly challenge, self-imposed and gratefully met.

Maintaining close social ties like my much-loved Thursday evening group of Bruggelingen who meet to chat in English but who have become dear friends to me en route, is important. My regular emails and occasional Facetime sessions with members of my family, and their various intermittent visits, plus the visits of friends, all are important to my continuing feeling of positive belonging. My relatively sporadic attempts to begin to learn Dutch, about to be stepped up, help me to tackle absorbing and challenging activities, providing intellectual challenge and goal-setting, leading to some satisfaction, are all helpful in maintaining a happy state and a healthy mind.

 

 In my first year here, I had to make myself STOP
taking photographs of the skies, from my apartment windows.

I have always appreciated too, the importance of really loving where you live and my apartment is, sans pareil, a constant source of delight each day. And the town of Brugge itself, its architectural beauty, its unparalleled history, its narrative of mediaeval glory, descent into poverty and irrelevance, and eventual emergence as one of the most visited tourist sites in the world, provides a theatre of life which is a constant joy.

 Yanis Varoufakis

In last week’s New Statesman, Yanis Varoufakis, the economist and sometime Greek Minister of Finance, claimed that he was most happy NOW. He asserted there was in his life a general coalescence of different harmonies, his private life; his writing career and his political involvement, which combined to give him ‘an incredible satisfaction.’ I felt an immediate resonance when I read that because, with similar but different harmonies, I too find that general coalescence and satisfaction. I also watched on my Ipad this week, a BBC programme with Joan Bakewell interviewing centenarians. She talked to perhaps five people between 100 and 105 and they were all remarkable but the one who most impressed was a little lady of 105 who was bright, confident, cheerful, positive, inventive, independent. But I noticed, in the various clips, the real love and admiration for her from her quite large family. She took all the loving attention as her right and expectation, and indeed her position as the focus of family gatherings. She was clearly accustomed to the love and I could see how incredibly important that was to her self-concept and feeling of contentment in her world.



 Voila! The very lady of 105 demonstrating the power
of positivity in old age.
Happiness personified.

Art and concerts

 The divine Claudio Monteverdi
1567-1643

Julian and Christoph Pregardien

Plunge in temperatures after our lovely late Indian summer accompanied by rain. BUT much to cheer about! Friday evening to the Concertgebouw, still somewhat besieged by the endless ‘t Zand 'improvements’, but functioning well inside in its usual austere fashion. To celebrate the 450th anniversary of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi, almost a week of celebrations here, including the Anima Eterna concert with the improbable title of Monterverdi’s Greatest Hits! Title notwithstanding, a marvellous concert indeed, with music from Il Ritorno d’Ulisse, Tancredi e Clorinda and Lamento d’Arianna plus madrigals. The singers were outstanding; tenor father and son Pregardien and mezzo Marianne Beate Kielland. Anima Eterna were, as ever, peerless.

 Bram Nolf, oboist

A second concert, the first of the season’s Negen Muzen programme, on Sunday mornings at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, proved to be much more of a lecture than a recital. Bram Nolf and Filip Neyens, both members of the National Orkest van Belgie, spoke on the ways the oboe, the alt-[oboe], the fagot and contra fagot work and are played. The Dutch was undecipherable for this listener but in fact, the talk was clearly entertaining and instructive; the illustrative music-making was delightful.

 

I also took advantage of the 14^th edition of Buren Bij Kunstenaars, the annual Open Studios scheme when artists of all stripes open their work spaces to the public. One studio on the Langerei, for two artists showing decorative paper work and stone calligraphy, also reminded me of the often stunning Bruggean interiors hidden behind a conventional large garage door opening from the street. That particular one led to a splendid interior room with others beyond and views of a swimming pool [covered] and lovely clipped hedges and box trees in a garden further away. The receiving room buzzed with interested people around the paper work artist who was demonstrating at a terrific rate, but I was captivated by the harmonious lettering on stone by the calligrapher. He was delightfully disinterested in material reward; when I asked how much his creations might be, he replied that he hated to sell them. 'They are like my children,' he added. Oh delight, in a Trump-infested world, innocence and beauty linked almost effortlessly alongside the artistic excellence of his creations. Good deeds in a naughty world indeed.

Hidden behind a garage entrance along the Langerei
Unsuspected beauty.

Then today, Monday, I returned to another display visited too hurriedly at the weekend. I was entertained to coffee and chocolate and discovered a couple in a lovely home; both retired, she now a passionate painter and both so interesting and enlivening to talk to. A happy half hour passed before thoughts of scrutinising the watercolour portraits again; eventually home thinking that perhaps I had found a portrait to buy and two new friends to meet again!