Hello bloggers.

I wanted to share some thoughts with you that I’ve recently had about the manifestations of happiness.

I believe that happiness is a state of mind.  The porest people live in the most beautiful places:  They live on the ocean, they take food from the sea and use the land to grow food agriculturally.  In some societies, they would be considered downtrodden, but in my view, they are the kings and queens of the world.

Contentment is a very scarce anomaly among the human species.  Being content, happy, and loved—all those, I find, are probably more apparent in places that we consider remote.

Rose and I visited the Amazon and encountered a tribe of Indians, whose lifestyle we in industrialized society would think was very minimal:  sleeping on reed beds, living in huts with thatched roofs and mud walls, hunting with blow guns...  They seemed very content and happier than a lot of people I know who own mansions and Rolls-Royces.

My general observation is that the more urban and industrialized, the more frantic the pace, and the harder it is to carve out time for reflection and contentment.  In other societies, they carve out time for work, but the contentment and loving aspects of their lives seem to be the driving force, not the anomaly.  Maybe that’s just my perception.

But like anything else, all of these things exist between our ears.  One person’s chaos is another person’s calm.  How we look at things and perceive the world could be very much dictated by our culture and perception of what’s good and bad.

It always intrigues and bothers me when the pundits talk about the cartels in other countries sending all the drugs over our borders.  Who the hell is taking it?  There wouldn’t be the problem if our people weren’t partaking in that forbidden fruit.  Are drugs our society’s way of looking for spirituality in a foreign, artificial way?

Thank God in my most alcoholic days I never did experiment with drugs.  I’ll put a gold star on my forehead for that, next to the idiot sign for the alcoholism and smoking.

The bottom line is that it’s hard to create happiness—but as they say, you know it when you see it.

Matt