Happiness in the sub-Antarctic? First, a little background.
A year ago, I met Nicki, an adventurous, dream-following scientist woman. Nicki and I were seated next to each other on a bus in eastern Kazakhstan. I was on the hunt for the story of someone following an unusual dream, and she was road-tripping from Mongolia with a friend. Like all conversations during long bus rides in foreign countries, the dialogue quickly turned profound. I revealed I was on the hunt to tell the story of someone pursuing their ‘happy’, their wildest dream. Nicki revealed she was a filmmaker. It wasn’t long before Nicki and I decided to work together. We’d combine my storytelling with her filmmaking and create a short film about someone in Kazakhstan achieving happiness!
So what does this have to do with the sub-Antarctic? Well, after Nicki and I created our film, and after she went back to her day job as a scientist for New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, I got to thinking. I thought: What if I worked with filmmakers all over the world to tell stories, through short film, of people trying to achieve whatever it is that makes them happiest? What if a global network could help those people get the tools they need to become…HAPPY?
That’s when The Happiness Idea was born!
But guess what happened next? Just as I was about to pen my first post to you, the one that was supposed to say, “Hey, welcome to The Happiness Idea!”, I got a telephone call from my friend Nicki.
Nicki told me she was traveling to the sub-Antarctic islands, one of the most inhospitable regions of our planet. It’s stormy, windy, and no one has managed to survive there for more than a few years. In fact, some of the few who have lived there over the last several centuries have been castaways from shipwrecks who were so desperate to escape that they took their chances sailing away with boats they’d made themselves!
But…Nicki is a scientist, and this island expedition is an honor. When she told me she’d be taking her camera along, we both knew we had to go on the hunt again, just like we’d done in Kazakhstan. So, while Nicki is doing her science thang, she’s also going to be on the hunt for someone, someone in the sub-Antarctic, who knows a thing or two about happiness. Once Nicki returns from the bottom of the world, she and I will put together a short film for you about the pursuit of happiness…in the most inhospitable of places!
So stay tuned to The Happiness Idea on Facebook and Twitter. And if you feel like making us happy, do share this post! The only way we can succeed in spreading happy is by growing our network!