Thanks to one of my favorite websites, BrainPickings.org, I discovered the DrawHappy Project.

It’s premise is simple: Draw what makes you happy. It should be easy to do, right?

According to BrainPickings:

The project began in Iceland, consistently listed as one of the happiest places in the world, where Catherine began asking people, both locals and tourists, what made them happy.

‘I realized that one of the most universal and clearest ways to record their responses was to ask them to draw what made them happy. Drawing is one of the earliest skills we learn; its basic elements are comprehensible to people of all ages, cultures and nations. I reasoned that if people knew that they were happy, they should be able to identify the source and moreover, visually embody this joy.” ~ Catherine Young’

With its incredible cast of characters, from a theology-student-slash–dancer to a conservation-engineer-turned-hostel-housekeeper to a security-guard-slash-2D-animator, and its wide spectrum of happiness-markers ranging from the simple and poetic (“friends, family, love, cats, traveling, sunshine”) to the somewhat worrisome (“control, attention”), the project is an absolute delight of voyeurism and shared humanity.

I shared my “Dance Doodle,” drawn from all the way up in the clouds while I was on my way from Manila to Kuala Lumpur, and I also discovered that there’s been only one submission from the Philippines so far (as of 10PM on May 15). If we’re the happiest people in Asia, maybe we should draw and share that here, too–don’t you think?

C’mon–let’s give it a shot! HERE’s HOW.

And for good fun, I’m sharing my “Dance Doodle” again here.

Now it’s your turn

P.S. By the time you read this, I’d be on my way up to the Mulu Caves so I won’t be able to reply to any of your responses. But I WILL check on the number of Philippine entries as soon as I can, and hope that more of us would have submitted there by then.