Few days ago I came home from almost 3 months travel in Thailand and Bali. I am impressed by Bali, poeple there are so nice and helpful. I would like to live there one day. I am not writing this to show up, I just have the thoughts that should be shared.
I am realy worried about our society. First day I came home I went out and everybody seems so angry, cold, dark minded and not nice. When I was in Bali it was much different. People were smiling on each other on the streets, caring about others, helping each other and communicating each other. For example one day I almost crashed with one Balinese on motorbike cause he was crossing my way during turning. Guess our reaction...angry? staring on each other like "hey man get out of my way"? No, we smiled and laughed on each other and on the situation and said sorry to each other.
Or another very heart warming situation. We went to the beach to lay on the sunbeds, local from the "restaurant" came to call us on his sunbeds, so we wiil eat there and so on. Meanwhile relaxing he was talking with us and helping us to find some good spots around. He even rented to us snorkeling set for free, what he normaly charge around 3€. After that we asked him if he knows some surfing spots, he said he will take us to one, cause its very hard to find. When we finished swimming and etc. he went on his motorbike in front of us so we can follow him. He showed us the spot, took us to the local surfers. When we went back I wanted to gave him 50k IDR (3€) and he rejected that with words "No I don't want your money, I just want to help you. Now I have some money so please keep it." I was shocked cause I thought that he was wasting his time and gas so he can ask for some money.
For you that never been in Bali or not so developd countries- people here are very poor(earning monthly around 150€), many of them are not even sleeping on bed, but something like very thin mattrace. All the day they are eating rice with some egg or crackers, cause they grow rice there. They don't have drinking water, they have to buy it. They don't have cool cars, phones and not even clothes. They don't have shops where you can buy anything like we do.
Why than they are so happy, helpful, nice,not stressed, not chasing something, not living for working but working for living?
I think that, we western people are in bad based society. Our society is based on materialism, wanting more than you actualy have, or somebody else have. From kindergarden they teach us to behave like somebody else want and to be still better and better and improve cause you are not enough. They teach that you have to work hard, but for what? We are realy not living, we are just working. Do you think that is normal to live 2 days from the week and 5 days working? And even that 2 days in the week you might be not doing something you realy want cause you are tired from work.
We are working to accumulate money, to buy cool clothes, to buy newest phone, to buy cool car just so you have some status of succesful man? We work hard to buy things we don't need and to impress people we don't need to care about. Just to mean something in the society. So we actualy end up in rat race. We earn money, but we spend it on cool clothes, car, house, of course iPhone and other things, so than we have to work harder to earn more money to buy some things again and this repeats again and again.
Big problem of us is comparing we are nonstop comparing with others. When we don't have what others seem to have we are angry and we want it. Some of you might think "I want to travel like him, he is so happy to see all that beauty and be on the sun". But it is not so easy and so wow all the time! In Bali I had 1 time food poisoning and 2 times diarrhea for few days. I lost around 3-5kgs. I had to work hard half of the year 6 days in the week to save for traveling. And not to say that I have nothing just luggage and equipment. So do you realy want that now?
So I think we should change our selfs and not comapre with others, be helpful, be caring, get rid of luxury, get rid of feeling that we are not enough, be hungry to mean something in society, we should just enjoy the journey of life cause it can end in a second.
Lets check this monkey experiment and understand why comparing to others is not good for us
Check out this funny but sad video about us seeking for happiness
Thank you for caring and reading until here, if you agree please share to raise awarenes.
P.S this inage is not mine, I just want to show you how Balinese happy people looks like, even they have to work hard manualy just to have to eat something
