I have been overseas away from my home country for several years now and although I know I must leave in order to preserve my possibility of having a future with reasonable financial success, I need to leave and go back "home." I do not relish doing this because there are a ton of things about living in the country that is on my passport that I figured out that I really do not like and most of this came from being overseas and seeing the absence of it.
The two things I covered before in part 1 and 2 were as follows
- Getting commercialism out of your life and focusing on things that really matter
- Being focused on your future financial situation instead of spending just to live in the here and now... which kind of relates to point number 1 very closely.
Now the other thing that I have noticed since moving over here to Thailand is something that I don't think I would have had enter my life had I not moved and this is something that has improved everyone's mental health that has ever taken it on and honestly, more people should have a go at it.
Don't allow politics to be the center of your life
I should say that you should just not allow it to be any of your life because when I see certain people I know online that are self-appointed activists for something political, they seem to be rather miserable people who focus on very little else and don't have much happiness in their lives.
Even before I left the states I feel as though most people in America allowed their lives to be consumed by politics. There were some people that I know who put some much garbage on their social media (well, they didn't think it was garbage) that they managed to piss off half of their friends that they spent 10 years building up. They managed this by having political diatribes constantly online and when someone didn't agree with them they would explode on them. When I would see these people in public they seemed almost as though they should be institutionalized because of their manic obsession with politics and converting people to their side.
Here's the problem with that though. Have you ever known anyone that gets converted? Have you ever known someone that sees a meme that gets shared online and all of a sudden is just like oh, well I never thought about it that way, I guess I'll change my political party affiliation! This has never happened and when I see people that speak about political things here in Thailand it is extremely rare. When it does get brought up it will only be a matter of minutes before someone else in the bar or at the event tells them to shut up about that shit, let's have fun!
Maybe apathy isn't the best way to go either but honestly, does it do anyone any good to be focused on politics all the time?
I am able to separate myself from politics over here because while I do look at the political situation in Thailand, my opinion about it doesn't really matter because I am not a citizen and cannot vote. When I look at the politics of the USA those things don't really affect me over here and I kind of wonder how much they really affect the people that are complaining about it all the time. I think the only people that these elections really affect are the people who get elected to office. I can honestly say that after a few years of living overseas that I no longer care who gets elected to any particular office in the USA provided that they keep the rest of the world sweet with the State department so that when the time comes I can leave the USA if I want to.
I see so many people that I know that never left the United States to live (that's most of them) and the ones that think as though their activism is actually going to make a difference - and I doubt that it ever does - seem to be the most unhappy people that I know.
Just look at this chart here. This covers 3 different presidents in the USA and we can see that everyone is just getting more depressed. I have no idea what the criteria for the scoring was but for the sake of argument lets just assume it was fair and scientific. No matter who you affiliate with, you aren't getting happier just because "your guys" are in office. So why would anyone continue to pursue something that isn't even going to make them happy anyway?
Living somewhere that I truly love has taught me more about what is really important in life and to me, I think real happiness doesn't come from things you can buy or the amount of "likes" that your political post gets online, but from the things and people around you. Well, that and not having to pay an arm and a leg for housing and healthcare. These are other issues I am going to face when I get back to the States because both of those things cost nearly nothing over here.
But we'll save that life lesson for another day.