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.

“Contentment is the only real wealth. – Alfred Nobel”

Hello all, hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are living up to your New Year Resolutions.  Hope to start blogging again soon but am going through a separation at the moment with all its upheaval.

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

It would be nice to report to you that I am following my own advice in attempting to reach a state of some contentment but it is more of a case of ‘do as i say not as i do’.  It is not to say that some half-hearted attempts have been made but I have to stop and stocktake.

The major problem is work.  Ever since I left the job in August I have been unable to stop working on my Mixed In Different Shades project which is providing me with hours and hours of fascinating pleasure doing things that I like doing like writing, web site management and web development.  Additionally not only am I learning lots about the subject matter, I am learning more about Internet marketing and advertising.  Add to this mix the compliments and new personal connections being made on a daily basis and this project has become more of an obsession.  Mentally the project serves me well.

Because I am spending so much time on the project I am procrastinating on some issues that I need to be dealing with now.  My wife and I are separating, luckily by mutual agreement, as my future plans and hers do not lend themselves to harmonious co-existence.  My youngest children are affected by this and deep down I know that this will be one of the hardest things I will ever have to go through.  I know emotionally I am not tackling this well, hiding behind the ‘I’m a man’ persona.  It sits there niggling me with the other related things that need doing like fixing up the house and putting it on the market, the negative market I must add that does not bode well for equity recovery.  Additionally, I am currently working full time on this project and living of savings but after the family move out to Africa, my financial situation is going to get a little scarier with the project not growing as fast as I would had hoped, my earnings have been miniscule so far.  I am not sure I am ready to deal with all this and missing my kids.  Emotionally I am in a little turmoil only made bearable by the emotional satisfaction of work.

The weight is not coming off and if I intend to do a lot of travelling for my project, I need to get fitter and thinner, no doubt about that.  In some of the places I intend to visit there is likely to be times when I need to move very quickly and waddling out of there might not just cut the ice.  I have reduced my refined carbohydrate intake quite substantially – which has helped before – and was exercising daily for a couple of weeks before I caught a cold quickly followed by doing my back in.  So no exercise for this fat boy for two or so weeks so far.  Whilst I find the reduced carb diet fairly easy to maintain especially since I am doing much more cooking – returning to an exercise routine takes a lot of effort to do – effort I prefer sticking into my project.  And yet I know I need to get fitter and thinner and it keeps niggling me.

Most of my thoughts when I am not physically working are on matters to do with my project.  I have thoughts, schemes and dreams of what I want to do and how it will turn out.  I have a lot of faith, with bouts of doubt and self-doubt,  that this will all work out in the end and me and mine will all be happier for it.  Spiritually I am very hopeful and uplifted.

Generally I would say I am fairly happy but I have these niggling issues that keep being swept to the back of my mind.  I know this is an illusion and if I do not regain some balance I am likely to become unstuck with issues that have grown due to lack of care.  So here it is, now that I have written about it, I have to do something about it, n’est pas?

BTW, I do intend to post more often and to try and stick to the subject of this blog though I may have to make a set commitment within my project timetable.  When I do start travelling, I will be keeping an eye out for things that will relate more to this blog than my project as I try and apply my contentment formula to different people in different societies – let’s just say this should make for some interesting posts.   Specifically, just how much does a sense of identity contribute to your happiness?

May you find the balance.

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’m not the only one saying this….

If You Are Unsatisfied With Your Life, You Only Have One Choice: Follow Your Heart.

France - By the Lake

I cannot believe that it is nearly a month since I posted here – where has the time gone? Maybe my project is turning into an obsession. Anyway, here goes.

Last week, I went to visit my sister in France and with the additional wish to catch the last of the summer sun that appeared to have by-passed the British Isles this year. My sister has an 11 year old daughter and a 3 year old son and both speak both English and French fluently. Her son who has never lived in the UK speaks is excellent for a 3 year old but has strong French accent despite both his mum and his sister not having one. What is even more fascinating is that the 3 year old can switch from language to language without thinking even in the same company – speaking to his dad and grandparents in French and to the rest of us in English. He was even teaching my daughter how to say some stuff in French. Quite amazing!

Growing up, I was lucky in that all the countries I lived in English was spoken widely enough for basic day to day and schooling life to be not much of a problem. Despite that I learnt enough of the local languages to get by, after all my friends would all speak their mother tongue on most occasions and I was not going to be left out!

Brazil - Carnival

It is quite moving when you read of the initial misery of immigrants as they try to learn new customs and languages. I follow a number of ex-pat bloggers in Brazil where Portuguese is widely spoken. Every one of them has made big efforts to learn the language including attending evening classes and displaying great frustration with perceived lack of progress. Just being able to do the basics without interpretation is the initial target. However, even when a reasonable level of language acquisition, these bloggers organise meet-ups so they can speak English and discuss living in Brazil. They need to do this because the deeper language of feelings and experiences are best communicated in the mother tongue and we need to do that occasionally.

Apparently, and I say that because we are still learning so much about our brains, adults process other languages differently from children growing up in a multi-language community, hence the difficulty we have with new languages. Not so sure that remains true for too long, my sister assures me she is even starting to think and dream in French!

France - Alps

It is not only with other languages that we have problems, communicating in our own languages can be problematic. Many misunderstandings and conflicts stem from lack of communication or miscommunication. How many marriages have you heard of that have gone to the wall because of ‘communication breakdown’? There can be no doubt that communication is a major aspect of the human condition and yet many times we erect barriers to communication; my favourite example is the widespread use of earphones in public. Can we, then, wonder why we feel that life is passing us by and we end up unhappy? Just something to think about.

By the way, the pictures in this post where taken by your truly with a simple point and shoot camera – good, innit?

May you find the balance.

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.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”  Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970).

If you are a consumer of the countless American success formulas, you will know that the vast majority will educate you to remove not all your own doubts but any doubters that may be around you.  You must be certain of the path you have chosen and pursue it relentlessly lest you lose your momentum towards you goal of success.  Doubt is the enemy.

Now there is something I have learnt over my decades on this planet and that there is rarely a human trait or any other animal’s for that matter that does not have an evolutionary reason for existence.  Just how many times must scientists state some trait has no value only for it to be retracted months or even years later before we get the hint?  It may not always be perfect, it may be troublesome, but a lot of nature’s gifts are there for a reason.

Therefore, doubt must, no doubt, serve its purpose, so to speak.  All living creatures have an overarching purpose, to survive as long as possible in order to procreate as much as possible.  We may think we can overcome this principle with our will until such time as it is tested.  Doubt allows us to examine whatever evidence is before us to ensure that it makes sense and does not pose a danger to our survival.

Self-doubt is the having to examine your actions and your motivations.  Brushing it aside is a recipe for disaster because to be successful you must constantly review your environment and the effects of your last actions and review any assumptions you made about the direction you are traveling.

And so it is for yours truly.  Now that things have sort of slowed down a little and things have not been going according to plan, I find myself re-evaluating the big decision I made a few months.  What’s different is that whereas in the past, I would be beating myself up and being miserable, I recognise what is happening and though a bit deflated, I am letting my thoughts sort themselves out for a while.

Until next time, may you find the balance.