From the Perspective of a European 20-something

by mirhiban, IFOR Austria

Today I want to write about simplicity. What does it take to lead a happy life? In a world that is constantly growing more complex, a world full of multiplying opportunities and freedoms for the few fortunate, this is not as simple and easy as it might look at the first place. We grow up in the belief that we can reach anything that we want if we only work hard enough: wealth, fame, health, beauty and … happiness. All the opportunities lie ahead of us, like ripe fruits waiting to be collected on a straight path that we just have to follow.
It seems so easy: Study and work hard, get as much money as you can so that you can provide your family and yourself a happy life including a flat TV, a car and holidays overseas. This is what our media, our economy, our educational system, the whole system we are living in, are telling us, every day. Coming from a time when there were still many needs to be met, where our countries depended on people to rebuild them, these answers and beliefs belong to an era that is coming to its end. We all can feel that our current way of consuming the world is a dead end road – it has visibly come to its end and there is high need for alternative routes. But how to find them? How can we build a new world for ourselves, our children, and - in the words of Yann Arthus-Bertrand - the "six billion others", while we are still deeply rooted in the old system with its beliefs that once seemed so true? How can we resist the wishes and imagined needs that the system tries to impose on us? 

 

Nowadays we live in a time that is marked by contradictions. We still live the old system, we consume things that we don’t need just because we are used to consuming them, and try to fill the void in our lives with newer and newer gadgets that promise to let us feel connected. At the same time, we feel that there is something completely wrong. We watch our economy going down, we lose our connection to the earth more and more, we are silent witnesses to the human tragedies happening not only at Europe’s borders but also in our countries, in front of our faces, and somehow we know that our world is going to see deep and fundamental changes within our own lifetime. But still, we support the old, aging system, as we are part of it. We study and we work and we earn money and take loans to buy houses that we cannot afford and hold on to the myth that some day we are going to enjoy a nice pension when we grow old. We buy Fairtrade products and IPhones at the same time. And while doing all that, we somehow feel lost in that in-between life that is ours. 

 

Recently, I have been trying to answer the question – the one which is not simple to answer at all – for myself. I think the finding out is a long and confusing and contradictory process for which we need time. Time to think. Time for sitting in a park on the grass and just do – nothing. Then, eventually, bits and parts will reveal themselves to you. What is it that really matters to you in your life? It is probably the hardest part to take that time for yourself. We are all “time-poor”, but it is time that we need to solve our most pressing problems. 

 

I invite you to take that hour to sit down and do nothing but think. Let the bits and parts come to your mind. Build your own mosaic of answers for the new world that is yet to begin. If you like, you can share your thoughts with others using the comments below this article.