I was thinking this lately: nice people, people who can really empathize about what other people think and feel, the people who desire not to hurt others and to not cause conflict–these people won’t have much say in their lives. I don’t mean the cliche “nice guys finish last.” I’m not talking about some sort of contest. I’m talking about your happiness, about the direction your life takes, and the person you become because of the choices you make.  You can spend your days accommodating those around you, trying not to upset them. But the way people are…so hard to please, so easily upset, so incredibly demanding–that process will never end.

I can see how so many people follow the path they are on because they are simply good nice people. They get with a good, nice girl and they stay with them because they don’t want to break her heart. Then they have kids and they work for years and years to provide for them because that is what good, nice fathers do. And they sacrifice and sacrifice, until they have very little of themselves left in any definable way–because they are just good people.  Even if they are unhappy, they do not want to confront others about it because they don’t want to infringe on others happiness.  You could spend a life like that.

Nathan, as I said this, pointed out that there is a difference between being nice and being accommodating. This may be true, but its hard to tell the difference.  And there are a lot of people out  there who don’t seem to know the difference. Gah, I’m such a nice guy.

I suppose a little bit of stubborn selfishness goes a long way in forming the sort of life you want. Then again, isn’t that what Ayn Rand was really getting at with the Fountainhead?

I was also thinking this: I am nothing more than a pretty nonsense fountain. I spout little nothings through my days.

On another note, Nathans advice to me today was this: Walk over to a mirror, look in it, and say “I am the badest ass motherfucker I know.”    That in direct contradiction to my declaring myself a pretty nonsense fountain.

Currently, we are all tied together. Not through any sort of positive energy, spirituality, or community, but instead, sadly, we are all connected by money. Everything that we do for one another, or have done for us, ends with the simple, but sometimes harmful phrase “What do I owe you?”

But Estonia has created a place called the bank of happiness That provides similar service to classified ads without having to worry about paying for any services you receive.

The bank allows users to create accounts listing the sort of skills that they can do for others, and the sort of services that they need.

This is a great idea for building communities. Working for others based on altruistic methods (because the person you are working for won’t necesarily be the one who works for you) would create strong, binding communities, without being bound by money. This would be a perfect break, if not a permanent break, from the seemingly flawed system that we currently use.

photo courtesy of bank of happiness

This is the place where I live.  It is 732 square feet for two people. I costs about half of what I make. I live here comfortably with more than enough room to spare. We have carpet. A fridge. A television.  Three computers. There are nice flowers outside.  I own a car. So does my fiance.  

These are slums of Mumbai. There people live in a way that I can only imagine–in a way that I can only gather from small glimpses from things like these pictures or movies like Slumdog Millionare.  Their whole experience of life is completely uttery different from everything I know, from everything I see on a daily basis.   Where I see flowers, they see trash. Where I have T-shirts, they have rags. 

And I am only a college student. This says nothing of the millions of other Americans with far more money than I have now. 

I don’t say these things to make people feel guilty. It is too easy to turn off guilt, to come up with excuses, to forget these pictures as something far away and distant. I say all of this so that I can sit here and think, for a moment, how limited and complacent and sheltered my life is here in America. My whole life I have been told I should be grateful for this great country I live in, that I could be somewhere else where they have much less.  And what do you tell those people sitting there in front of those makeshift shelters they call homes?  What is their life about that is different from mine?  What do I know, what do I see, that they don’t?   

As far as I can tell, our experience here in America is laughable.  What must others think of us? I must know. What is it like to be that? What is it like to struggle for your existence when there are millions of people across the world who expect things you only dream of? And these people, they turn away and forget…and they are grateful for their blessed country and their lucky status. 

What is this life of ours? What are we doing here in these United States? Earlier I wrote about how leaving the country made me realize just how much our lives here in America seems like a little bubble.  Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I see it to be true.  From the time we are children, to the time we die, Americans can have and often do have more than most of these children of these slums dream of having–even some of our poorest.   My question is not even the obvious one (why don’t we help others?). Rather, my question also becomes, what are we missing from our experience here in our bubble of prosperity?

I have never been one to think we should not move forward and advance this world but are our lives in the US truly progress in any social, cultural, or philosophical sense?  What good is wealth if your experience becomes a constant flow of boredom and complacency?  I’ll say much more later on about the conditions of others in foreign countries as I learn and explore more (It is my hope to one day in the future to go and meet and talk to these people). But the first question I would say we need to ask as those of wealthier status is just this: is your life really interesting simply because you are wealthy? Would you life not be more interesting in another form?  That is, is your happiness predicated on your status?  Because that is a miserable thing to base one’s happiness on. 

It seems to me that I would greatly benefit from a varied experience rather than this limited and sheltered one that is the essence of the American suburban lifestyle.   Of course this may just be the spoiled American talking. I’m not saying I wish to be poor, only that I wish to be more knowledgable of the people out there, to feel the things that they feel, to understand, in any small way I can, the lives they live, and to see the beautiful power of people who see what is important in life.  It’s just a guess, but I would say that these important things–they extend far beyond money. 

Pictures Credits: The Slums of Mumbai by SuratL and Slum by the Sea by Jeremy Higgs

Optimistic-Pesimist: A person who recognizes that the world is full of problems and that things are not fine or good or even mildly acceptable but still has hope and belief in humanity and civilization. They believe, on one hand, that we have come a long way throughout human history in improving our lives and existence but, on the other hand, have a much further way to go. Also characterized by the belief that, as the world has gotten more complicated, the issues become increasingly more difficult to disentangle so that it takes somewhat of an exponential effort to continue to keep humanity on a path of improvement.

See also: Non-suicidal emo-kids, disenchanted college students, skeptical technological futurists