Getting out into nature is a simple and effective method of finding happiness. But not just anyplace; rather, it's at the park across the street. According to the findings, the happiest parks were identified. Is it possible to apply the same formula for pleasure to the local green area as well?
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| [A park in Ukranian capital Kyiv in 2021/Unsplash] |
When it comes to happiness, things may become complicated. Despite the fact that one spends his or her life running after the ideal and searching for it everywhere, one generally only recognizes pleasure in hindsight, after the event has past. You must simply ask yourself every waking moment: Is this happiness right now? If you want to be consciously happy, you must ask yourself this question: Is this happiness right now? American experts from the University of Vermont have now contributed to the specialised publication "Plos One" by assisting in the study. They demonstrate that pleasure can be obtained quickly, consistently, and in the same location every time - specifically, in the city park. It is recommended that you go the considerable distance to Indianapolis in the American state of Indiana if you want to be totally certain about your decision. In the opinion of a group of biologists and data analysts, the green areas in that area provide the greatest "pleasure."
To be sure, it is not a new discovery that trees, meadows, and lakes are good for our health, as Goethe was well aware ("How brilliantly nature shines on me!"). The characteristic is referred to as biophilia, which means "love of life," and refers to the human proclivity to seek refuge in woods and meadows. Studies have also shown the therapeutic advantages of local green spaces; in fact, the topic of "Green Space and Health" was discussed in the UK Parliament in 2016. According to the survey, those who lived near a park were more physically active and were less likely to suffer from diabetes and heart disease.. People who live farther away from urban green spaces, according to a Dutch research, are more prone to suffer from anxiety disorders and sadness.
The American researchers have now refined their findings to distinguish between which parks make individuals happy and which parks do not. In fact, New York, with its world-famous Central Park, only placed in sixth place overall. In addition to the leader indicated at the outset, the top slots were taken by the parks in Austin and Los Angeles. That information is of little value to us in our nation, but the study's key finding is that the financing of the park, that is, the amount of money spent on upkeep, had minimal impact on the amount of extra happiness that visitors had as a result of their visit. However, it is the size of the park that matters: people were happiest in parks larger than 40 hectares, which is equivalent to more than 50 soccer fields. Following it came the development of tiny local parks.
That leaves the dilemma of how to evaluate happiness, which is both technical and philosophical in nature. In 2022, the solution is self-evident — with the assistance of social media, no doubt. To conduct their research, the researchers examined more than 1.5 million Twitter posts to determine how frequently they contained words with positive connotations, such as "beautiful" or "perfect," and then assigned those words to the location where the user who posted the post on their smartphone had typed them. The tweets were more cheerful when they were between trees and flower beds than when they were outside of parks. According to the researchers, the tweets from the historically happiest days on Twitter, Christmas and New Year's Day, were used as a baseline for happiness. This point in the research, while reading it, is surprising — it is the New Year! The magic of Christmas may still be felt in some places (gifts, roast goose). Traditional blemishes on the first of January, however, include a champagne hangover, lofty but ultimately unachievable goals, and the sad thought of being another year older but remaining unimpressively unchanged in wisdom. Regardless of what makes you happy, New Year's Day may be difficult. It was seen in a similar manner by Goethe: "A new year has dawned, and I must fulfill my obligation; respect demands that I compose poetry here from a pure heart, but no matter how rotten it is, it is well-intentioned."