Patrick Adriel Aure, founding director of the Phinma-DLSU Center for Business and Society, has highlighted similarities between the Danish concept of hygge and the Filipino notion of ginhawa.
In an essay published in The Manila Times while attending the Academy of Management 2025 seminar in Copenhagen, Aure wrote that both concepts focus on shared comfort and contentment with “just enough” rather than constant accumulation.
He described experiencing hygge in Copenhagen as enjoying simple pleasures such as long dinners, candlelight and presence over productivity. According to Aure, this mirrors ginhawa, which he defined as encompassing comfort, life force, holistic wellbeing and shared prosperity.
Aure suggested that Filipinos already possess this cultural wisdom through traditions such as pakikipagkapwa (shared identity) and bayanihan (communal unity) but often overlook it in favour of Western measures of success. He encouraged businesses and policymakers to consider sufficiency and shared wellbeing as essential parts of prosperity.
