What Does Community Joy Mean for You?

Justin Pasquariello
3 min readFeb 16, 2023

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The Happiness Industrial Complex is Broken” explains why we need a community joy approach. But what does that mean? How will that lead us to approach life, work, and the pursuit of happiness differently?

I’m glad you asked.

A community joy approach builds on the research on individual happiness and joy — but shifts our focus outside ourselves to produce much greater returns.

Our five pillars of community joy draw on the same body of research individual happiness approaches draw on. Those pillars are: relationships, purpose, fitness, contemplation, and fun.[1] Future posts will dig in more to the reason we have five pillars (and not more), and the significance of each pillar, but now we’re going to talk about how they fit together in a community joy strategy.

We’ve intentionally ordered these pillars for community joy. A community is a collection of relationships, and nothing matters more for wellbeing. Long and strong relationships, and a combination of both strong ties (i.e. your closest friends) and weak ties (the people you say hello to as you go about town) support joy. Living in close geographic proximity — in a community — supports the development and longevity of both types of relationships.

Relationships enable joy to spread (joy is contagious — particularly in community!). Spending too much time pursuing our own individual happiness can ironically lead to reduced happiness. The community joy approach recognizes supporting the happiness of others does more to boost our own joy.

Our family, friends and community support us in our pursuit of purpose. Almost every purpose, whether big or small, is directly or indirectly oriented toward others.[2] Our community reinforces and benefits from our pursuit of purpose, and when we pursue purpose big and small in our community — whether serving as a volunteer tutor, serving customers, or spreading joy through a smile — the rewards are strengthened as we build stronger relationships and live in a better hometown.

Fitness and contemplation are essential for personal joy and wellbeing. They are in their rightful places as the third and fourth pillars of community joy, because they are most effective not as ends in and of themselves, but rather as the self-care that enables us to build strong relationships and purpose. We also gain enhanced benefits from our pursuit of fitness in community; participation in team sports is associated with even greater increase in life expectancy than is participation in solo fitness activities.

There are many benefits to mindfulness and other contemplative activities, whether or not they are anchored in a spiritual tradition. There are additional health and happiness benefits specifically from regular participation in a religious congregation — that do not accrue to those who are religious but not affiliated with a congregation (i.e. pursuing contemplation in community brings more returns).

And finally fun: list three of the most fun times in your life. How many of those times were spent alone? Fun in our communities strengthens community relationships — and also means much less commuting to and from the fun activity. Commuting is pretty bad for happiness, and less of it makes the entirety of the event more fun.

You might be wondering now how to get started on this pursuit of community joy. I’ll be sharing ideas and stories in the posts to come. Please share your ideas and stories too; respond below or send me an email.

This is the fifth of a series of posts about increasing joy in community: the only way we really can significantly increase joy. Whether you’re seeking the best ways to increase your joy; working to make your community the next Denmark; seeking to save democracy; hoping to boost health and well being; or just a family member of friend who wants to kindly tell me you’ve been reading along, this bi-weekly column is for you. If you like it, please help spread the word too.

[1] We’ve wanted to find a good acronym for these — without compromising the meaning of each one. If you have any suggestions, please send them my way. The winner will receive a shout out right here — and a free subscription to this blog.

[2] Even if one’s sense of purpose comes from pursuing a solo passion, or pursuing excellence, others often delight in seeing that passion or excellence — and their joy brings joy back, making that sense of purpose more complete

Pursuing community joy — courtesy of our Joyful Eastie approach

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Justin Pasquariello
Justin Pasquariello

Written by Justin Pasquariello

Justin is Executive Director at East Boston Social Centers, where we are leading an evidence-based movement to significantly increase community joy.

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