A 59,969,536 Patch Quilt

"I shall stand for everything that is light
and beautiful and true and wonderful."

-The Pig of Happiness, by Edward Monkton

I have a quilt on my bed made of eighty-eight patches all signed with messages from eighty-eight friends. Twenty-seven of those friends wrote something about my "infectious" smile or "contagious" laugh. To them, resplendence of character is what I will be remembered for. Emotional contagion: what a splendid thing!

It is a truth universally acknowledged (thanks, Jane Austen, for that wonderful phrase) that happy people make us happier, and sad people make us sadder. Apparently, there is now actual research to back this up. "A friend who lives within a mile and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25%. Similar effects are seen in spouses (8%), siblings (14%), and next-door-neighbors (34%)," says James Fowler of University of California.

The study showed that one person's happiness affects up to three degrees of separation...meaning your happiness could legitimately affect friends of your friend's friends.

What this means for me is that each one of my eighty-eight friends on my quilt has been affected by my happiness. In theory, that will affect each one of their friends (let's say they have eighty-eight). That happiness, in turn will affect each one of those people's "eighty-eight" friends.

So...that makes about 59,969,536 happier people.

I have a hunch 59,969,536 happy people could probably make this world a happier place. I'm not sure about you, but that is enough to keep me smiling. And I just might need to get a much, much bigger quilt.

Start spreading the happiness now...