Earlier this week, Pope Francis offered up his Top 10 Secrets to Happiness in an interview with Argentina’s weekly publication “Viva,” and I was admittedly shocked to see that one of them wasn’t “Playing the fire challenge.” The cool thing about the Pope’s listicle, or Popesticle, is that each step is something realistic that we can all work toward, so long as we’re willing to open our hearts and minds and put down Kim Kardashian: Hollywood for five f*cking minutes.
Of course, a Top 10 list by itself is boring. So I decided to do the Pope a solid – even though he owes me plenty for helping to get him Poped in the first place – and dress up his secrets to happiness for this Internet era of glitz, glamour and GIFs. No need to thank me, Pope Francis, unless you want to call my high school physics teacher a jerk in your next Papal address, in which case we’d be even.
1. “Live and let live.”
Everyone should be guided by this principle, he said, which has a similar expression in Rome with the saying, “Move forward and let others do the same.”
Translated:
2. “Be giving of yourself to others.”
People need to be open and generous toward others, he said, because “if you withdraw into yourself, you run the risk of becoming egocentric. And stagnant water becomes putrid.”
Translated:
3. “Proceed calmly” in life.
The pope, who used to teach high school literature, used an image from an Argentine novel by Ricardo Guiraldes, in which the protagonist — gaucho Don Segundo Sombra — looks back on how he lived his life.
“He says that in his youth he was a stream full of rocks that he carried with him; as an adult, a rushing river; and in old age, he was still moving, but slowly, like a pool” of water, the pope said. He said he likes this latter image of a pool of water — to have “the ability to move with kindness and humility, a calmness in life.”
Translated:
4. “A healthy sense of leisure.”
The Pope says:
The pleasures of art, literature and playing together with children have been lost, he said.
“Consumerism has brought us anxiety” and stress, causing people to lose a “healthy culture of leisure.” Their time is “swallowed up” so people can’t share it with anyone.
Even though many parents work long hours, they must set aside time to play with their children; work schedules make it “complicated, but you must do it,” he said.
Families must also turn off the TV when they sit down to eat because, even though television is useful for keeping up with the news, having it on during mealtime “doesn’t let you communicate” with each other, the pope said.
Translated:
5. Sundays should be holidays.
Workers should have Sundays off because “Sunday is for family,” he said.
Translated:
6. Find innovative ways to create dignified jobs for young people.
“We need to be creative with young people. If they have no opportunities they will get into drugs” and be more vulnerable to suicide, he said.
“It’s not enough to give them food,” he said. “Dignity is given to you when you can bring food home” from one’s own labor.
Translated:
7. Respect and take care of nature.
Environmental degradation “is one of the biggest challenges we have,” he said. “I think a question that we’re not asking ourselves is: ‘Isn’t humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature?'”
Translated:
8. Stop being negative.
“Needing to talk badly about others indicates low self-esteem. That means, ‘I feel so low that instead of picking myself up I have to cut others down,'” the pope said. “Letting go of negative things quickly is healthy.”
Translated:
9. Don’t proselytize; respect others’ beliefs.
“We can inspire others through witness so that one grows together in communicating. But the worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes: ‘I am talking with you in order to persuade you,’ No. Each person dialogues, starting with his and her own identity. The church grows by attraction, not proselytizing,” the pope said.
Translated:
10. Work for peace.
“We are living in a time of many wars,” he said, and “the call for peace must be shouted. Peace sometimes gives the impression of being quiet, but it is never quiet, peace is always proactive” and dynamic.
Translated: