Retirement - you can keep it!
The view from “my office” today
A recent report found that happier countries have a “healthy balance” of prosperity, trust in society, low inequality and confidence in government. However it has been shown and further promoted by the Dalai Lama that countries with a high degree of social integration consistently fare well in these reports.
Interviews with refugees from North Korea with its shortages of almost everything and an oppressive government regime have consistently shown that these refugees were “surprised” that although the “west” appeared to have everything, life back home was a lot happier.
The same experience was found after the Berlin Wall came down with East Germans, many of whom longed to go back to the former regime where social ties were much closer and everyone seemed to help each other through the common adversity.
I was around well before the decommissioning of NSFNET in 1995 which led to the world wide explosion of the internet, using painfully slow fail up modems and trans-atlantic telephone rates to access so called bulletin boards such as CompuServe, America Online & Prodigy. Being an ageing hippy, I embraced this formation of a new anarchical community without boundaries just as I had hoped the hippy movement in the 60’s would.
Today, with internet entrepreneurs earning a claimed $3000 a day and lottery millionaires being declared bankrupt after just a few years, the question has to be, “Does money buy you happiness”
The answer has to be “NO”.
So, what does?
Belonging to a community with its warts and all seems to do the trick.
My office was a bar (no surprise to those who know me!) in Puerto Galera on Mindoro island in the Philippines. I loved the sense of community here with the women sitting around the same kitchen table from mid-afternoon onwards to prepare the evening meal talking about whatever women talk about (I couldn’t understand as they were speaking Tagalog, but then I wouldn’t have been able to understand them in English either, as a cloth-eared male incapable of “reading between the lines”!). This sense of community in a place where a bed for the night was £5/$7 and a meal was £2/$3, where money didn’t seem to count for much was absolutely wonderful.
My dream is to get bored, lonely, disillusioned, unfulfilled people together, share common thoughts, dreams, aims & goals and eventually have events where we can all meet.
This concept was developed by listeners to Terry Wogan’s radio shows who became Terry’s Old Geezers (TOGs) with events held around the country for no other reason than to get together and bemoan their lot in typical english fashion.
Across the pond, you have a similar view to community as represented by “liming” - originating in Trinidad & Tobago, it represents the disappearing art of having around, drinking large quantities of alcohol and generally doing this that “She who must be obeyed” would not approve of!
As I always seemed to be the subject of disapproval, can I urge all fellow sufferers to join us…
Recent Comments
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Thanks for sharing Chris:))