Why does it take seismic events to get us to act like neighbors?

It turns out that community, resilience, and optimism are all bound up together, Fredrickson said. "To be doing really well in life is to be handling the hard stuff well and with clear eyes and to find the ability to have positive emotions. What I’ve concluded is that positive emotions are the fuel in a way, the active ingredient that allows people to be resilient and optimistic."

We would hope that we are optimistic, resilient Thank you, thank you so much! people. But according to her research, shockingly few of us are. "Flourishing mental health is about as rare as depression in this country," she said, estimating that only 20 percent of American adults are flourishing, meaning "feeling good and doing good, making a contribution to society, really feeling integrated with [their] community.

SHOOT: Fantastic article in ELLE magazine.

clipped from www.elle.com We were a country of individualists to begin with, but the Internet has made us even more so, to the detriment of another American idea: community. I don’t buy the argument that Facebook (which I do get pleasure from) brings me closer to my friends. Instead I’m "tagged" and "poked" by people I used to call on the phone or meet for a drink. When I try to conjure the times that New York has felt communal to me in the 16 years I’ve lived here, I can think of three. The first was during the weeks after 9/11. The second was during the 2003 blackout, when people fired up their grills and invited their neighbors over to eat candlelit feasts of all the food that was going bad in their refrigerators. The third time was November 4, 2008, when Barack Obama was elected and New Yorkers spilled into the streets cheering and hugging and honking their horns in impromptu parades. It took seismic events to bring us out of our houses and actually act like neighbors.