My friend Batja Mesquita is a Dutch cultural psychologist, and the first time I traveled to visit her in Belgium, she told me that we were sharing the emotion gezellig. Curled up in her living room, sharing wine and chocolates, she explained that this emotion means the comfort, coziness, and togetherness of being at home, with friends and loved ones. Gezellig is not an internal feeling that one person has for another but a way of experiencing oneself in the world.
