Event aims to sprinkle happiness
SANDPOINT — The forecast may be calling for plenty of sunshine but there will be plenty of sprinkles at Jeff Jones Town Square on Saturday — sprinkles of happiness that is.
Kinderhaven officials and a group of smiling people wearing bright yellow shirts will be sprinkling happiness at the town square as part of the Happiness Sprinkling Project.
Created by Laura Lavigne, founder of the Anacortes Center for Happiness, The Happiness Sprinkling Project is “crazy simple and crazy powerful.”
As part of the effort, folks get together, wearing bright yellow shirts, said Dana Albanese Bowen in a press release Thursday. They then gather at a busy spot in the town where they live and hold up “happiness signs” from “it’s going to be all right” and “breathe” and “you are loved.”
The events last for about an hour and, as they happen, there’s magic. People being “sprinkled” on their way home from work are surprised, puzzled — and moved, Bowen said. “They smile, they wave, they honk. Many join in and start sprinkling themselves. The messages are surprising because ‘they ask nothing of the viewer’ but instead send an expected burst of light, helping people tap into their own hope, strength and joy.”
The sprinklings, as they are known, started in May 2012 and have been spreading like well … happiness, and have been received with a mix of surprise, delight and occasionally tears of emotion, the press release notes.
“This is the most amazing project I have ever been a part of,” one person told organizers at one event. Another said simply, “The event was the happiest, most heart-centered day of my life thus far.”
Yet another said they couldn’t stop smiling 24 hours later. “Slept like that. My face may be stuck,” they added.
In the past four years, happiness ambassadors have popped up everywhere from Washington, D.C., Chicago, and California to Oregon, Seattle, and Canada. In 2016 alone, the Happiness Sprinkling Project has held events in the United Kingdom, Germany, and South Africa.
The growing movement is building a web of happiness ambassadors and happiness sprinklers and changing the world one gathering at a time, movement organizer said. One of the powerful aspects of this event is that the sets of signs get shipped from one ambassador to the next, thus forming a global “happiness chain letter,” adopting a very simple pay it forward concept.
All are invited join in and participate in this powerful and fun event.