The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams. — Oprah Winfrey

I spend many hours during my pre-teenage days flicking through atlases and reading any copy of National Geographic I could lay my hands on, imaging faraway places and adventures on foreign shores.  The fact that I happened to be living in the Seychelles during this period meant it was not a foreign shore to me.  My ambition was to become a sailor in the Royal Navy whose ships occasionally graced the islands’ shores and whose officers graced my mother’s guest house whilst on shore leave.

Time passed and we moved to Zimbabwe where, thanks to my job after I left school, I got to travel extensively throughout the country; a thing many people do not get to do in their own countries.  We were not obliged to stay in hotels (in many cases there were no hotels) so we roughed it.  I loved that part of my work but it all finally came to a halt with promotion.

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” –  Clifton Fadiman

Fast forward some years and I am a married man and father of one living in England.  Here, I come to realise that many people take some sort of holiday every year, in some cases, two holidays a year, many times involving travel to foreign parts.  I never seem to have the finance to do that and for years, my holidays were spent fixing up the house or the garden.

What I came to realise about many of those who did go on holiday is that fact that they rarely got to know the countries they visited.  Many went to Spain and spoke no Spanish or knew anything outside the holiday area the visited, the Alps attract thousands of English people and many can’t tell you anything about the local towns near the ski resorts.  Many have been to exotic locations like the Caribbean and not even left the resort!

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

Eventually I could manage and with a much larger family, took a holiday in Wales.  We did it again the following year.  On the second visit, we left the resort and went to explore the major towns of Cardiff and Swansea on day trips.  Some years later we went to France and despite my initial reservations, I find I actually like France and its people.  My two eldest children then went to New York, I did Brazil and my two youngest accompanied their mother to Zimbabwe.

If anything, Brazil was the catalyst for me.  It no doubt played a part in my decision to leave work and do something new which led to Mixed In Different Shades project being born.  Planning and writing for the project awakened the dream of travelling and seeing the world and it led to the realisation that I wanted more from life than what the future held then.  The state of our marriage and my wife’s vision of her own future meant that we came to the realisation that we were both unlikely to achieve any form of long term happiness together and we agreed amicably to go separate ways; so much better than spending the rest of our lives resenting, with its negative impact on families, each other.

So here I am on the 1^st of March, 2011.  So far, there have been various reasons for why I have delayed stepping onto the plane, reasons that are starting to look like excuses and I do realise that I am apprehensive.  This month, I will take that first step.

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

This trip will not be one of comfortable hotel rooms and plush local foods – these comforts tend not only to make travelling expensive but they remove from the very people you travel to meet – so maybe a better description of what I am about to do is vagabonding.  Vagabonding requires stepping out your comfort zone, embracing experiences as they come along; a way to connect to the planet and its people and a way to find out who you really are.

May you find the balance.

Links

• Vagabonding
• The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes Of All Time

Thanks and here we go again.  Life has certainly changed for me over the last few months and particularly since my separation.  I am currently in the throes of trying not to get buried under the enormity of it all and keep my project – which I also reviewed here – moving forward.  Have I practiced what I preach about balance over these few months?  No, and it shows in the stress level I feel right now.  No exercise, no healthy eating, all my mental capacity concentrating on what needs to be done and emotionally on a roller coaster.  At least, I feel alive!

Within the next month I will be leaving my home to undertake a sort of pilgrimage around the world, a sort of adult gap year if you will.  Now that of course does not do much for my contentment level at all.  Facing uncertain challenges is not the recipe for a happy person but I am hoping that once I get used to time on the road, I may find time to practise what I preach.  I hope to appreciate what life is all about.  Failing which, the lessons I will learn will no doubt be a source of some personal growth, if I don’t kill myself or get myself killed.  Maybe though I will find my true place in the sun where I can settle and attempt to achieve the balance I so seek in my life.

What more can I say?

May you find the balance.

I have so much going on this holiday season so no updates will be made on this site.  Please don’t be put off by this, I will be back with a vengeance in the New Year.

ONS is developing new measures of national well-being. The aim is that these new measures will cover the quality of life of people in the UK, environmental and sustainability issues, as well as the economic performance of the country.

To develop better measures of the nation’s well-being we want to consult with people, organisations and business across the UK as well as central and local government to ask what matters most in people lives and what is important for measuring the nation’s well-being.

via Measuring national well-being: Office for National Statistics.

“The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.”

Read More here

In 1972, Bhutan’s king proclaimed that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.”  Bhutan, one of the poorest nations led the world to seriously consider measuring the happiness of its citizens as opposed to how much money they generated.  Every year since then, the Prime Minister reports results to the National Assembly.

The recent news that the Government is contemplating a general wellbeing index (GWB) has attracted a lot of attention and commentary and since this is a ‘wellbeing’ blog, who am I to buck the trend?  In fact, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) was already working on implementing a measure so it was going to happen even without the Government’s involvement.  In 2006, a UK poll found that 81 percent of people believed that the government’s primary objective should be the “greatest happiness” of its citizens, rather than the “‘greatest wealth.”

Measuring citizen’s wellbeing is not a new concept and when David Cameron as the newly elected Conservative leader in 2005 first muted the idea, many other counties were either measuring it already or in the process of implementing it.   For example, Thailand instituted an index after the coup of 2006 and last year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, organized a commission led by Nobel Prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to re-examine how France measures progress.  Sarkozy embraced their recommendations to measure non GDP indicators.  As far back as 1968, Bobby Kennedy, of the political Kennedy dynasty of the US, is reported to have said “we cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones average, nor national achievement by the gross domestic product.”

In 1974, psychologist Richard Easterlin showed reported that after a certain point, rises in national wealth are not matched by increases in happiness for it citizens.  As usual with scientists, there has been some controversy over the study but it is generally accepted that richer countries are not as happy as most would expect.  The whole study of happiness has sprouted Happiness Economics, numerous bestselling books such as Oliver James’s ‘Affluenza’, numerous websites such the ‘Happy Planet Index’ and a branch of the self-help industry worth billions of dollars a year.

To measure happiness is fraught.  Not all of us will agree with all of the aspects that the scientists come up with, things like psychological well-being; good health; work-life balance; community vitality; education; cultural preservation; environmental protection; good governance; and financial security.   For example, it is said that marriage and having a family is good for your level of happiness, but that of course assumes that it is a good marriage in the first place and I suspect that many parents of rebellious teenagers might not be very happy.  Access to health care is another one but there is a difference to there being a clinic at the end of my road to actually being able to afford the treatment required.

To top it all, we humans are finicky.  Think about times when we think something will make us happier and then when we do achieve that promotion, that new car, that expensive honeymoon, we realise very quickly how it fails to lead to greater happiness.   Is our reported unhappiness in the Western world due to the fact that our expectations are higher?

Whatever the Office of National Statistics comes up with to measure our general wellbeing, it is unlikely please everybody especially a government that its doing its worst to make us unhappy, but then complaining does makes some people happy.

May you find the balance.

Links

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11756049
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_economics
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlin_paradox
• http://www.nationalaccountsofwellbeing.org/news/archive/parliamentary-group.html
• http://www.physorg.com/news73321785.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index
• http://mapofhappiness.com/world/
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/15/happiness-scientific-david-cameron
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/16/unhappiness-david-cameron-wellbeing

Here in the UK, we are starting to feel the heat.  Our fairly new Government is hell bent on cutting the county’s deficit and at the same times use the relative compliance of the population to achieve something the Conservatives have always advocated –the destruction of the social service structure.  Despite calls to slow down the savage cuts, this coalition government is steaming straight ahead.

There are of course many commentators going on about their favourite concerns ranging from university fees, the national health service, unemployment benefits, housing and, of course, the not to be forgotten immigration.  Many commentators are also pointing to the fact that many of the ‘well to do’ will not be ‘in it together’ like the rest of us and that it is the poorest in society that will bear the brunt of these cuts.

If you read the countless commentaries that are the mainstay of newspaper sites these days, you are likely not to wait long for comments from the “I’m alright, Jack’ brigade.  You know, the ones who believe that should you be unlucky in life to have fallen on bad times, lost a job, got sick and lost your home, that it is your fault and that you are obviously enjoying the crumbs from the tax table and not making any effort to improve your situation.   God forbid you happen to be foreign, that’s bad enough, but add the fact that you also happen to be in dire straits as well, well that’s sacrilege!

You may be wondering why I would be writing about this in this blog.  I admit,  I did consider publishing in on my news commentary site notthenews.net but this is about how society affects us.  Humans are social animals and we are happiest in our social circles.  If our society is degenerating to the point where we fail to show compassion for our fellows, it will not be long until we find that no-one has any compassion for us and that, my friends; will seriously affect your happiness.

I fail to understand that the relatively educated can stoop to the point of tarring everyone with the same brush on the strength of a minority’s wrong doings.  Yes, there are people who scam the system, rich and poor, but most people are honest and upstanding –rich and poor.  I challenge anyone to prove that there are more scammers then honest people on any social benefit in the UK, However between the politicians and the headline grabbing ‘benefit cheat’ stories, we are being made to believe this is all for the best and we will resolve our social ills by cutting social safety nets.

The title of this post is a quotation allegedly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette during one of the famines that occurred in France during the reign of King Louis XVI, yes, him who was executed during the French Revolution.  The quote symbolises the uncaring nature of the rich for the poor which is what we are now facing.  Whilst we in the West steam ahead forcing our populations into poverty and despair, new growing countries like Brazil are recognising the dangers of this on the country’s development and stability and have introduced a social benefit, ‘La Bolsa Família’, for the poorest of their citizens.  In the time that it has been introduced – during the President Lula’s term in office, not only has it reduced poverty, Brazil’s middle class grew!

History has taught us many lessons including the French revolution and the recent food riots around the world – the latest in Mozambique – that when good people get poor and desperate they are unlikely to worry too much about the morals of their actions.  Right now, today, if we look around at our world we see the consequences of poverty and despair on the stability of any society – from the Sudan to the drug wars in Mexico.

I, personally, believe that in any civilised society, there must be a minimum standard of living for all citizens and I distrust anyone with a vested interest in making that not so.  It is from that point that we need to work out systems that weed out those who would seek to take advantage of the system, rich and poor equally.  One way would be to stop everyone’s ‘them and us’ view of government – the government is not our enemy it is supposed to be us – and to restore the sense of fair play instead of the ‘good guys finish last’ mentality that is now prevalent throughout Western mentality.

So here is a warning to those of the ‘get rid of the scroungers’ army.  The money you save in taxes due to smaller public expenditure, you will spend that and more protecting your properties, your family and those closest to you.  When you have armed guards outside your house, when you have to carry a gun in your car, when there’s barbed wire around your children’s school and you have to step over starving and dead bodies to get into your place of work – you will then have to ask how much happier are you.

May you find the balance.

Asked how happy are you, if you are a typical Ugandan, you would most likely say very happy. According to a survey on the social, political, economic, and cultural opinions by Synovate Pan Africa Uganda, a market research organization, up to 61 percent of Ugandans are either happy or very happy with their life. (via allAfrica.com: Uganda: Smiling at Trouble).

Good for them.  Too many people think that you can only be happy in a rich country but as you grow older you realise that it is not your wealth status that determines your happiness status.

I want to let you in on something.  My new project that has been keeping me from posting here as often as I should and want is called ‘Mixed In Different Shades’ and is about the history of inter-cultural relationships and mixed heritage people around the world.  How are these two things related you might ask, a blog dealing with trying to find happiness and a history of various small populations around the world?  Let me explain.

Why do people do attach such importance to identifying as a particular race, tribe, citizen, nationality?  To study all races, tribes, cultures and nations would be a huge undertaking so taking on one that is relevant to me makes sense.  Does identifying this way improve your well-being?  Is that improved by being the majority in your society or does that not matter?  Does it require a physical community or simply the recognition within your society?  If racial identity is important are all other aspects of self-identification such as nationality just as important?  A project like that would be a great way to discover why and as I find these things out, you can be assured that this is the blog you will find out about it.

At age 15, I got one of a massive cultural shock and became very aware of my race.  Prior to that point I had lived in one of the most mixed societies in the world, the Seychelles, where my difference was courtesy of being regarded as a foreigner.  Before that I was a boarder at multi-racial convent schools in Zambia and what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.  It was on my return to Zimbabwe and my entrance into what was, a few months previously, a ‘whites only’ school that provided the hard cultural shock.  To cut a long story short, the two mixed race boys in school were fair targets for some racist behaviour.   Being mixed race, I was socially lumped in the ‘coloured’ category and in response I did make tentative steps for inclusion in the community during that time, though my family never really got into the coloured culture.  Leaving school, I found myself working with people of all races and quickly lost any sense of important attachment to my race.

Coming to England, 10 years later, I was surprised again at how much importance people attached to their race especially within ethnic minorities.  It’s obvious that I may be one of the few people that attach very little importance to race in my day to day life.  I quite suspect that many people who know me will be surprised, though not said it out loud, that I have started a project about race.

Along the way, I will create a resource to serve many people who are interested in the history of intercultural and multicultural issues across the whole world.  The project will also join the wave challenging the grave injustice of the ‘one drop rule’ which denied those of mixed heritage accepting the multitude of their ancestry.

To top it all, I have selfish reasons for doing this.  This project gives me the opportunity to explore many issues of interest to me such anthropology, genetics and history, provide the opportunity to travel and to spend my time researching and doing something I really love, writing.  It gives me work that does not restrict me to one physical location, I can work from anywhere, at any time and whenever I want and if things go roughly to plan, to make a reasonable living out of it.  This is a good way to make me content.

May you find the balance.

According to Wikipedia, “although the human brain represents only 2% of the body weight, it receives 15% of the cardiac output, 20% of total body oxygen consumption, and 25% of total body glucose utilisation.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain#Brain_energy_consumption).  Assuming of course that working the brain, like working the body, ups energy requirement and considering that I have spent over 2 months sweating my brain on a thinking treadmill getting my new project off the ground, I would expect that I would have lost some weight.  Alas, that does not appear to have happened. Why not?  Answers on a postcard, please.

Regular readers of this blog know that I propose balancing aspects of life in order to achieve some happiness.  Since leaving work at the end of July and working on my new project I have to admit that I have neglected my own advice.  However, as I have the initial part of project up and running now, I have recognised that I have to return to earth and have to deal with other earthly matters such as my emotions, health and wealth.  I am so much aware of my growing midriff and my growing unfitness.  This is what prompted my musings on the brain.

The truth of the matter is, I have never been a physical type of bloke.  Any physical endeavors, apart maybe from walking,  requires a major effort on my part and the only successful times I have engaged in any long term physical activity was when it was incorporated into my daily routine.  Any break in that routine, and it requires concerted effort to restart.  It seems so unfair that life expects a ‘geekish’ person like me to take up physical exercise to stay fit and healthy, so unfair.

Even my spiritual time, contemplation and day dreaming in my case, has been dominated by the project.  There are other things I need to contemplate though and I am becoming so aware that time is rushing past like an express train and I will need to deal with some of these matters very soon.

It would appear that being so engrossed in an activity can, at least for a certain period of time, overcome any shortcomings in your life balance.  I must admit I have not been particularly unhappy and I have been enjoying the change of working situation.  I know I have been firing on mental overload and emotional and physical suppression but I can feel I am heading for a ‘sugar crash’. 

Now the project is in the sort of ‘act, wait and see’ stage, I need to turn my attention to other things and my physical aspect is the most pressing need and that needs lots of work, rats!  Ah well, it means I can post more regularly again.  Any suggestions of a weight loss exercise regime for one of the laziest people on the planet will be gratefully received.

May you find the balance.

CAN money buy you happiness? The answer, it appears, depends on what you mean by “happiness”. High earners are generally more satisfied with their lives, it seems, but a persons day-to-day emotional wellbeing is only influenced by money up to a certain point.

via Money can buy you happiness – up to a point – life – 07 September 2010 – New Scientist.

I am currently working on a new project that is taking up all my writing time.  I hope to be re-posting soon.

“I am available on most weeknights, not degree educated but well versed in matters of politics, economics, religion and the like.  Personal disasters like career disappointments and failed romantic encounters can be discussed and I am not too averse to bouncing balls, kicking balls and hitting balls with a bat but much prefer the kind of play available at the local night club.  I can hold my liquor quite well and am unlikely to return any curries eaten under the influence.  Being a little on the large side enables me to fireman lift any friend to whom the excitement becomes too much.  All this for the price of a taxi ride home!  Bookings being take now, form an orderly queue please, we’re British.”

Yes, my friends, this what we have been reduced to, on top of rent a TV, rent a fridge, rent a lady for a dinner date , we know can rent someone we can bore the pants off.  Unlike real friends who can piss you off, ask for their money back or simply disagree with your fascist views – this one you get to choose from a wonderful list of rental friends.  Be very careful how you type that into Google, will you please, we would want you finding out what other kind of ‘friendly’ services that are for rent.

Ignore these sourpusses at the Independent and at the Guardian, just because they have the time to be making friends and putting up with their boring lot, we know in the real world we need to get what we want and get it now.  I am sure the bank manager, a good friend if there ever was one, will authorise the overdraft extension to take out a friend a week,  Oh, OK then may be too much, once a fortnight then.  The rest of the time we can concentrate on working hard to pay of the overdraft – maybe two jobs will do it.   Apparently there are jobs currently available undertaken by illegal immigrants that no-one else would do for love or money, where a good British born worker would be gratefully received.  Who knows you might make an immigrant friend, you know the one you can say ‘I have a ….. friend’ in conversation with your rented friend.

By the way those of you on my Facebook friend list, please send me your credit card details, it’s nothing personal, just business.

On the other hand, go out there, meet people and make some friends.

May you find the balance.

We do not need to look for statistics to prove that the rate of marriage breakdowns is growing. Many of us have many have experienced it ourselves or have close family and friends who have and those of us with children will know that a significant proportion of their classmates come from ‘broken homes’.  Some of those classmates will come from ‘single parent’ families where a marriage was never entered into in the first place but may have been a co-habitation or ‘break-up before marriage’ scenarios.

The politicians, particularly in the UK, would have us believe that this core family breakdown is the root cause of some of the worst social problems.  Those who spout ‘family values’ harp back to the good old days of life-long monogamous partnerships.  Why don’t they harp back to the life-long partnerships of polygamous marriages, both polygyny (man has more than one wife) or polyandry (a woman has more than one husband), which existed prior to, most probably religiously instigated, monogamy?

I am a believer in evolution not only in the biological sense but in the social context as well.  I am always pointing out to particularly my poor long suffering children, some reason why some ‘backward’ behaviour has roots in the distant past which improved the survival odds of the society that practised it.  For example, there was, at some point in history, a matriarchal kingdom on the English mainland where society was run by the females for the same reason that a tribe in Eastern Africa practised within strict behaviour guidelines what basically can be called group marriage – simply because the men were war-mongers and kept getting killed!

Marriage has evolved from the caveman kidnapping a mate with a club over the head, through various polygamous iterations in different parts of the world to the predominately monogamous relationships of the recent past.  Even today in societies where other forms of marriage are acceptable, the logistics and resource requirements of maintaining two or more families usually results in a fairly monogamous society.   

What  the ‘family values’ people forget that we are a society hell bent on being happy.   Whilst past generations held onto relationships that were basically dead, we have no such inclination.  After all, which one of us is entitled to be happy and which one of us is not?  Which one of us gets to ‘get ahead’ and which one of us has to remain in the shadows?  Which one of us gets to have the dream career and uproot the family to the other side of the world?  Which one of us must continue to take mental or physical abuse for the sake of the kids? 

Why is it that we expect someone we married 20, 10 or 5 years ago to be just as compatible with the changes that you have undergone in those years?  Why do we expect that what you want now is what your partner will want for the rest of their life?  We no longer regard acceptance of the status-quo as an acceptable compromise to achieve contentment. 

The ‘family values’ goody two shoes with their tax breaks for families and stories and statistics about the relatively longevity of married people and the happiness that children will bring hold us back.  They hold us back from working out an acceptable social framework so that those families facing break-up can look to their future knowing that all parties can find contentment if they so choose and avoid any further unhappiness.

This post in no way is intended to condone break-up but nor is it intended to discourage it.  If you happen to be in a relationship, it is you and you alone who can decide whether it is good for you, your spouse and any children involved. 

May you find the balance.

Here is one man’s view of how the simple, not necessarily the easy, can make you happy.   Though written from the sense of the simple home in the Brazilian favelas compared to the high life in the USA, it is the emphasis on simplicity, difficulty and community that the sense of wellbeing is being found – What is Home?