January 29: Micro-moments
I read this at Atlantic.com today:
"In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love.
Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.
Rather, it is what she calls a 'micro-moment of positivity resonance.' She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in 'It's a Wonderful World' when he sang, 'I see friends shaking hands, sayin 'how do you do?' / They're really sayin', 'I love you.'"
"In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love.
Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.
Rather, it is what she calls a 'micro-moment of positivity resonance.' She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in 'It's a Wonderful World' when he sang, 'I see friends shaking hands, sayin 'how do you do?' / They're really sayin', 'I love you.'"
You can read the whole article here. I'm not sure I agree with the overall premise of the piece--especially as I see further down my Facebook stream a photo of a couple I know who were childhood sweethearts and still going strong, celebrating their 47th anniversary today. But the concept of a "micro-moment of positivity resonance" struck me as a real experience, akin to the moment that often inspires haiku--that ephemeral burst of perception and mood the poem tries to capture. So as I look back on my day, I'm trying to think of a moment when I felt something like this "micro-moment of positivity resonance." This is what I came up with.
Back to work after a sick day.
A co-worker tells me
he missed me.