“What makes you happy?”
I ask the question of an old woman on a green mountainside beyond the remote village of Same, five hours inland from Dili, Timor Leste. Every line on her face tells a story.
“Being here with these people – my family and friends – makes me happy. We look after each other and I like this place. We are all together.”
And there you have it, folks.
The secret to life.
Being with the ones you love. Looking after each other, in a place you like. In spite of hardship – a jerrycan full of water lies at this woman’s feet, carried from a stream twenty minutes walk away – you know what’s important.
As I stand gazing out into mist through shrouds of green, past chickens that serenely scratch near bits of tin shackled together to make a private place to shit, my head goes feral.
So much of what's on our minds during daily life feels irrelevant in a place like this. The influence of AI on jobs and education. The results of the US mid terms. Low carb diets and immigration policy and the side effects of antidepressants and why can’t I remember my Netflix login? Does any of it matter?
Give me the simple life. People I love, people I can look after, in a place I like.
Not for these people the endless mental treadmill of deciding what to say, and believe and spend and think and who to side with and when to post on social media and when to shut up...
Existential angst? What’s that?
Give. Me. The. Simple. Life.
For long minutes, I stand there with tears hot under the surface and hammering heart thinking about all the bullshit this world serves up and wishing it would all just disappear and how much easier life could be...
And then a chicken lets out an almighty squawk – hit by a rock thrown by one of the kids who’s been silently observing me from behind a tree this whole time – and it’s like someone has slapped me hard around the head.
Timor Leste is not my place and this is not my story. Outrageous fortune, yes, but I was born in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, in a town with more cafes per capita than almost anywhere in the southern hemisphere. I’ve got pets who eat more than most people in this village. I’ve got two and a half degrees.
Yes, people and place and care for your family can create happiness.
But the conditions for that rarely just happen. Not for me, and not for this community, who alongside happiness speak their despair: no electricity, no running water, no respite from the rains that drive mud into their homes so that dogs and chickens and pigs take refuge with them at night on the raised wooden platforms they count as beds.
This simple life often sucks, and standing around starry eyed creates zero change.
From me, to whom much was given, much is also expected. I have the resources to know and to care about the people beyond my immediate family and friends, about the impact of our choices on the environment, about how I spend my time and money and energy. I have the resources to think about the best way to create social change alongside a generation suckled on screens and scrolling; how to influence young people in my care and try to paint a picture of a broader horizon.
If having more means anything at all, it means making use of it.
Where I live, with all I was given, that’s a constant, fierce challenge of mind and heart and spirit. Engaging with the world beyond our immediate concern is often tiring, and depressing, and really bloody hard.
But this is not a call to do everything.
Instead, it's a call to be intentional about what matters to us personally and why. It's a plea to assess what resources we have available for others, and how we can best use them.
There's a simplicity in that, don't you think? A strength that comes from focus, determination and discipline, with a horizon beyond your own tribe.
Maybe there's even happiness.
Image – Same, Timor Leste. Cheers Market Lane Media
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