worldnews

4839 readers

1 users here now

Rules:

Be civil. Disagreements happen, that does not give you the right to personally insult each other.
No racism or bigotry.
Posts from sources that aren't known to be incredibly biased for either side of the spectrum are preferred. If this is not an option, you may post from whatever source you have as long as it is relevant to this community.
Post titles should be the same as the article title.
No spam, self-promotion, or trolling.

Instance-wide rules always apply.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

143

I've lived in the Netherlands for 14 years—why we're always ranked one of the world's happiest countries (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was born in Poland and grew up in Germany, but my family and I have been living in the Netherlands for the last 14 years.

When I first discovered the concept of "niksen," or the Dutch art of doing nothing, I was fascinated. I even wrote a book about it. When I applied it to my own life, my perspective about happiness shifted in a significant way.

I believe niksen is one of the reasons why the Dutch are consistently ranked as some of the happiest people in the world. Niksen might seem selfish or boring at first glance, but it's actually a service to you and your community.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Niksen is the Dutch word for “doing nothing” (see idleness [german: Müßiggang]) and has been increasingly used since 2019 as a buzzword for a promoted relaxed lifestyle. The Niksen is comparable to the Dolcefarniente (Italy), kalsarikännit (Finland), Lagom (Sweden) and hygge (Denmark).

German Wiki

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

"Lagom" means "just enough", and has more to do with not taking more than you need, and I believe it being strongly correlated with the cultural "jante lagen" (="thou shall live and act as a humble human."). Niksen and lagom doesn't seem to have any similarities beyond that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Kalsarikännit is getting drunk alone at home.

A sign of alcoholism, so we Finns use humour to cope with it and talk about it jokingly. Like with suicide.

Equating that to hygge and lagom is just to simplify all of them to the point of almost complete reinterpretation.

However I don't disagree with what you're trying to convey, and those concepts may be tangentially related to a degree, but...