Saturday, December 10, 2011

Simple Life for Happiness

You wouldn't wonder if I say that the happiest place to live would be one of Scandinavian countries. You could explain easily the reason why those countries were entitled that why. Most of us would justify that the economic welfare would increase life satisfaction and generate happiness. That is very logical reason. But if I said that Tibetan and Bhutan people are among the most happiest people on earth. "Wow. How come?" That must be your first reaction.  On the contrary, I amazed by the fact that on the developed country like Japan, suicide cases occurs very often. Even nowadays the country that spread 'K-Pop fever' worldwide, South Korea record more suicide cases on these past years as economic developed. If we tried to case-analyzing those two countries, we found that there isn't single factor to determine that social problems. But if I may conclude one thing, it indicates that Korean people isn't much happier compared to those Tibetan. So it hampered the justification that happiness is linear with economic development.


On this post, I wont talk deeply about the relations between welfare or prosperity with the quality of life or happiness in those countries. I will contemplate more on  my daily life in the sophisticated era. Firstly, I'd like to recall the old memories. Do you remember when we were young, we used to play in the ground; played 'hide and seek' and many traditional games. We really had fun, be happy and be cheerful. Compared to the children on this era, they experienced such a different thing. Now, they prefer to play play-station, game-online, or own various gadget. Maybe it's a worse comparison, but I just wanted to underline that on the past although we lived a simple world but we felt a sincere happiness.

Time machine explained and showed us that era indeed changes, technology develops, and people should also 'develops' to adjust perfectly with the changes. For me, technology is the best invention in people history and helps us work efficiently and conveniently. But of course it affect on people's life. Beside technology, the development also change people life-style. Globalization is the main factor that powerfully influence the life-style's changing. Not forget to mention consumerism, materialism, and hedonism.

What  I wanna question here is I wonder why people nowadays forget how to feel enough and how to live in a simple life. And the factor I mentioned above could be one of the reasons. People now want to have more, achieve more, and own more. Couple hours before writing I came to the conclusion that we urgently need to be back to nature. We need to learn how to value simple life, simple mindset, and simple ambition. By simply learning that, maybe we can find our inner happiness and gratefulness. 

Our daily pressure mostly comes from external environment. But our mindset and feeling shaping it. Why we feel sad, disappoint, and rarely happy? Sometimes it was driven by our overwhelming desire and ambition. Why want to have and achieve more? Because the media, social pressure, consensus told us to do so. And because we know that others can do. So, those factors trigger us to haven't felt enough yet. As the matter effect, we forget how to live a simple life. How to accept and thank for a simple thing.

Let's learn from our Tibetan and Bhutan friends. Although they live in a very simple life, they value life highly. They felt grateful for what they have. They live their life happily. And, let's be the kids. They are very pure, simple, and happy. For them, the world is only a play-ground.

Let's be simple!
Let's be happy!
Let's dreaming high, but don't forget your foot still stand on the ground!





PS : Tibet is really enchanting yet peacefully beautiful. Take me there someday *,*

pic 1 from here.
pic 2 from here

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