Dear Dartmouth,
It’s February in New Hampshire. For the winter lovers among us, it’s a dream come true. With our snow-frosted trees and abundant opportunities for getting outdoors to enjoy the season, it’s fair to say that New Hampshire does winter well! We celebrate this season at Dartmouth in many ways, including the “Mardi Gras of the North,” our annual Winter Carnival.
Of course, whether or not you’re a winter fan, the weather conditions and the realities of living, working, and studying during the COVID outbreak also mean that this can be a challenging month for many people. So while it may seem obvious that you need to keep your body warm when the temps drop, here at the SWC we also want to emphasize other sources of warmth in your life. Our wellbeing theme for February is Kindness and Connection, about which my colleague, LB wrote:
“Kindness and Connection is all about making time in your life for others. Whether it’s through the simple enjoyment of another’s company or the giving and receiving of support from one another, connecting with kindness and authenticity can help bolster all the other elements in your life that need your attention.”
We know that relationships can feel difficult even at the best of times, and we also know that there are few things that have a greater impact on our wellbeing. Kindness and connection can awaken a deep sense of happiness and joy in us that can sustain us through the toughest of challenges. So this month, we want to reconnect with our wellbeing pathway of connecting authentically, and do so in a way that emphasizes the role of kindness in that process.
The first relationship that might be worth considering is the one you have with yourself. Do you relate to yourself from a place of kindness? Many of the people I’ve known over the years have found this to be a struggle at times. It can be easy to believe that there is something wrong with us that needs to be fixed, to hold ourselves to unrealistic standards, to override our intuition and our feelings with “shoulds.” Here’s a quick self-test. Read the following sentence and notice what comes up:
“I’m not ______ enough”
If you found thoughts immediately springing to mind to fill in that blank, it may be a good time to consider what it would look like to extend kindness toward yourself. We sometimes recommend thinking about how you would talk to a best friend, and using that kind of language to replace any self-talk that you use to criticize yourself.
As you grow in kindness toward yourself, you might find yourself becoming more and more open to others. Howard Cutler describes people who can access happiness as “more sociable, flexible, and creative, and are able to tolerate life’s daily frustrations more easily than unhappy people. And most important, they are found to be more loving and forgiving that unhappy people.”
Sociability, flexibility, love and forgiveness are all qualities that can contribute to meaningful relationships, and also represent different ways that we can extend kindness to others. Of course, it’s not necessarily a lack of kindness that gets in the way of our relationships. One of the most common factors is simply busy-ness. It can be difficult to find the time to connect in ways that bring much-needed feelings of safety, belonging, understanding, and acceptance.
So, a second challenge that you might offer yourself this February is setting aside time to connect with others in the midst of the many other demands on your life. You might even be able to integrate some opportunities to connect into your existing schedule, through study groups, shared walks or meals, or inviting others to different campus events.
In addition to the activities listed above, February is also when Dartmouth hosts events for Black Legacy Month and Visibility, Dartmouth’s annual student-led campaign to promote gender equity and end gender- and power-based violence. Engaging with friends in the events that make up these programs could be an ideal way to bring more connection and kindness to your life.
I’m currently reading “The Book of Joy,” and keep thinking about the following passage:
“Some might wonder what our own joy has to do with countering injustice and inequality. What does our happiness have to do with addressing the suffering of the world? In short, the more we heal our own pain, the more we can turn to the pain of others. But in a surprising way, the way we heal our own pain is actually by turning to the pain of others. It is a virtuous cycle. The more we turn toward others, the more joy we experience, and the more joy we experience, the more we can bring joy to others….So being more joyful is not just about having more fun. We’re talking about a more empathic, more empowered, even more spiritual state of mind that is totally engaged with the world.”
For me, this captures the relationship between kindness, connection, justice, and equity, and how our practice of these qualities can bring both individual and community wellbeing.
All of us at the SWC are wishing you all a wonderful February, and we’re here if there are ways we can help. Please explore what we have to offer, and don’t ever hesitate to reach out!
Take care and be well,
Todd