Is Personal Happiness Paramount?

Hello! I'm back, alive and well, all things considered. I guess I've been under the quarantine doldrums. There hasn't been much going on and nothing has really inspired me to sit here and write. I've been watching a lot of TV...Netflix specifically.

Last night we watched "Crazy Rich Asians". It's a fairly innocuous love story that has echos of Cinderella and other starred crossed love tales. (No, that's not a spoiler.) As I was boggling at the money and life style of "comfortable" Singaporeans, I almost missed the underlying theme of culture. (Spoiler alert!) The hero's mother has an interesting objection to the chosen heroine: American-Chinese and Chinese-Chinese are not the same. A-C's only think about their own personal happiness, whereas C-C's put family before all else. The cultures are inherently incompatible.

Being raised in North America, I was affronted. What's wrong with wanting to be happy? As the heroine points out "Don't you want your son to be happy?" The answer is a very solid chirp of crickets. Now, of course the mother would, ideally, like her son to be "happy". What construes "happy" might have a different definition in her mind. But, I digress, as usual.

This morning, I woke up thinking that, maybe, Mum (yup, complete British English - know your history) was on to something. The West seems to be struggling. It's reflected in the anti-mask wearers, the "personal rights" protesters, the folks for whom inconvenience is anathema. Our own personal comfort supersedes all other considerations. Perhaps this is why China is so dominant currently. (Yeah, there are other factors to be sure.)

We've done it to ourselves, in fairness. We've moved from subsistence level survival to the luxury of, well..luxury. By some measures, even our poverty has tones of luxuriousness. Okay, I'm going down a slippery slope here, but bear with me.

Let me reference another Netflix revelation from "Dracula". The Count, Vlad, comes to land (England) after having been submerged under the sea for around 200 years. He breaks into someone's house. (Now, as I can see, this person is by no means wealthy. Everything in the kitchen is dated, the furniture has seen better days, the car's a beater...etc etc.) When Dracula meets the female inhabitant he wants to know if she's rich. He's not wrong. Life in the 1600 -1800s was vastly different from life now. He lived in a huge drafty castle with few (if any windows) fireplaces to try and fight of the drafts (not that he cared, of course), poor hygienic practices, fledgling medical knowledge, rudimentary technology for almost everything and here he is in a house that has things like refrigerators, ovens, flushing toilet, cupboards full of food (granted it's most likely highly processed, but what does he know about that?) and machines that can take you places without the need for animals and running water for heaven's sake! He's thrilled about smart phones.

My point? We neither see our blessing and we are programmed (quite literally) to be dissatisfied with them. (That's called commercialism, kids.) I'm guilty of it...I plague myself with "if only" this or "if only" that. Am I content with all the things I do have? Often, no, sadly. I have to practice being grateful for these incredible luxuries that modern life supplies us. I have to work at not buying into the "your life will be amazing if you own/buy [fill in the blank]". We really need to get back to enjoying things like spending time with those we love, with getting outside and appreciating nature,helping those in need and with being amazed that we actually DO know where our next meal is coming from. We're bloody lucky in that.

Why can happiness not stem from helping those around us do better? Why is my inconvenience (Mask? I'm not wearing a stupid mask!) more important that an other's suffering? (Oh, yes, capitalists, I know socialism is the gateway political theory to communism.) Humanity didn't get this far by being egocentric, at least not individually. We got here through cooperation and doing things for the greater good of humankind.

So let's be kind to each other. Let's put the safety of others before our own comfort. Let's work together and make things better, instead of using shopping therapy like it actually works.

Rant over.

The Little Blog that Could...part two

It's crazy days. There doesn't seem to be much to celebrate, at least on the world stage front. It kind of makes me just want to check out from cyberspace, find a cabin somewhere, well off the grid, and hunker down for the apocalypse. (Not that I'm anywhere near to being one of those "fire and brimstone end of the world" folks.)

But the times, being as they are, a little good news can go a long way. I'm happy to say that the little blog that you're reading right now, has passed a pretty good milestone...100,000 page views. Okay, it's not the Times or CBC, but for something that started out as a way to keep friends and family up to date on our progress, that's no small feat. 

 So here's to the Gentle Island or Bust blog...that went further than its title would suggest. Thanks for stopping by, maybe placing a comment and just checking in. Without you, well, we just wouldn't be here, would we?

What Cost Wealth?

This whole popularism thing has gotten me down. I see all these wealthy politicians in  first world countries scrambling to grasp every last cent and protect them from "undesirables". They're rhetoric is freaking out the regular population and people are losing their heads. Does it help the people that they're scaring? No, all it does is line the pockets of the sabre rattlers and make the gap between that vaunted 1% and the rest of us plebes greater.

Our fancy Vancouver loft

Don't get me wrong - I grew up in the "ME" 80's. Partying, fast cars, designer clothes. I wanted it all. I came from a lower income household, but I went to a high school in a wealthier part of town. I was the kid in the no name clothes, without a car (sometimes we didn't even have a phone) and my only spending money was for buying lunch. (Usually around $20 a week, but a lot of the time that also had to cover my dinner, too.) Forget the "class" trip to Hawaii for spring break, forget shopping at Aritzia or Guess, that was definitely out. So that made me hungry for the "good" stuff. I was going to have a big house, Porsche and a huge (dare I say YUGE?) wardrobe with lots of accessories and a billion shoes. (Confession: I got pretty close on the shoes.)

As an adult, I've lived (for a short time) the jet set life, where I could buy what I wanted, spend stupid amounts of money on a single dinner and not worry too much where the money was coming from. But that's a voracious thing. Suddenly standard brands weren't good enough, I wanted Pink Tartan and Luis Vuitton. Sure, a BMW sounds good - we worked hard didn't we deserve it? One day, my husband and I looked at each other and we realized that we'd been sucked into the vortex that is consumerism. We were working to amass STUFF. It wasn't the life we wanted. 

First attempt to simplify

Fast forward to now. I'm quite a bit older than that 18 year old girl with dollar signs in her eyes. We live a pretty low key life on a small pension that would astound most people. Our clothes are the best quality we can afford, but most of our money goes to traveling; to building up EXPERIENCES instead of that intoxicating, addicting STUFF that seems to have its grip on most of the world. I see no sense in paying $6000 for a something that I can pick up for $25. Having Louboutins doesn't define me as a person - and why should it?

How have I come to this? Part of it was just personal revelation, but having seen many poor countries, I've come to realize that the accumulation of wealth has very little to do with happiness. Of course, having no money sucks...worrying about how you're going to feed yourself or your children is a nightmare, but once you have a place to keep you safe and sheltered (whether you rent or own), a reliable stream of sustenance and a means to educate your kids, you don't really need a lot more. (Okay, I'm fan of hot water and internet access, but I'm a spoiled North American.) 

The new digs...still not shabby

In my work, I saw people clawing and grasping to keep every penny that's in their account and I'm not talking about the poor folks. I've talked to people whose only purpose in life is to accumulate more: money, cars, houses, and for what? I've never met anyone who thought they had enough money, myself included. I've seen VERY large bank accounts and balance sheets and still it wasn't enough. What's worse is they were willing to throw less fortunate people under the bus to acquire more. Ironically, the more they had the more they were terrified of losing it. They were losing sleep, getting old and making themselves sick with the pursuit of it.  Sort of like drug addicts, actually, now that I think of it.  It is the thing that drives the world's problems today. If only we could all step back, look around and say "it's enough, I have enough" then we could make the world more peaceable, kind and just.

Travel is AWESOME (when we can afford it)

I know a lot of you are fighting the hard fight - that the ends seem so far apart that they'll never connect, I've been you and my only advice is that you must believe that you can do it. For the rest of you, caught in the hamster wheel of status, maybe take a moment and just be. Be grateful for your health (if you have it), your loved ones, the clothes on your body and the food in your cupboard. I'm going to paraphrase something I read online, but can't source now: "If you aren't happy with everything that you have now, why do you think that buying more will change that?" (If you know the source, please let me know!)

I Choose Love

A flower is a flower, not matter its colour.

It was a close thing. I almost succumbed to despair. With all the news lately of mass shootings, bombing, hateful rhetoric, seemingly intelligent people spewing nonsense, it's easy to buckle under the weight. Perhaps, it also is an echo of post vacation blues, I don't know, but both Ron and I were feeling it.

The anger and hate that is floating around is like a miasma; poisoning our hearts and souls. It's palpable and cancerous. It can cut you off at your knees.

We lost a friend recently. He had the amazing gift of being able to hold onto his childlike wonder. He loved to travel and see places both new and ancient, but got the same joy from a custom made Magnum bar or bubble wand. I was thinking about what I wanted to write on his memorial page. It is hard to sum up a person in a few words. They never seem enough, but it was his wonder that got me. That's when it struck me. All of the grey that had been clouding my emotions was due to lack of wonder. Even knowing that that's what all those hate-filled and hate-fueled people wanted, I was choosing to let them win. No more. I'm taking the high road and the hard road.

I choose to stand up for equality, acceptance and understanding. I choose light over dark.. I will not sit quiet and listen to untruths, hate-mongering and self-pity; not even from myself. I choose wonder for this amazing world that we live in; for the people that populate it. I do it for those who have come before and fought the hard fight, for present and future generations, so that they can know that I wasn't weak, sad or despairing; that I live in hope.

Above all else: I choose LOVE.