Planting possibilities

What do fears and dreams have in common? They both represent possible manifestations of life. It’s like having the idea for a film – it’s real, even though it may never be realised.

Life is full with endless options. There is no written script, there are no limitations. As they say in India, „Sir, everything is possible!“

Many people argue that this is not true, that not everybody has the same possibilities. An African boy who hardly goes to school won’t have the same chances of becoming a scientist or a rich businessman as, say, an English boy who gets private tuition four times a week. But there is a big difference between chances and possibilities. Chances talk about whether something is likely or unlikely to happen; possibilities say whether it actually CAN happen.

If you want to make friends, but you stay at home all day, then meeting somebody will be impossible. You have to make an effort, you have to create situations that favour whatever it is you want to do. In other words – you have to plant seeds.

Lots of things will grow in any garden, even if you don’t put out any seeds. But most probably nothing will grow that could be of any interest to you. Only weeds and fruitless trees. If you want to be able to harvest something that you want, an apple for example, you have to go and plant that apple tree first. And then you have to wait – because seeds need time to grow.

It’s the same with possibilities – you have to create them. Sometimes they arrive with surprise, like when you suddenly find a full fruit tree in a hidden corner, planted years ago and already forgotten about. But somebody, at some point, must have planted that tiny seed which made the tree become possible. No seed, no tree.

So whatever it is we want to do in life, whatever our aspirations, dreams and hopes are – if we want them to become real, we have to first create favourable circumstances. Planting the seeds of possibilities.

Being patient

Here we are in 2012 – might be an exciting year...

With the economy, environment and even society all moving rapidly in a downward direction and stress coming from all sides, I’d like to dedicate the first blog entry of the year to something we probably all wished for on new year’s eve. Something we all need – good health!

When we are ill, we usually become a Patient and go to a Doctor. But what does it actually mean, being a Patient? And who's a Doctor?

Although the origins of the word have to do with suffering, PATIENT, in common use, means to be able to wait. Of course there are the waiting rooms in each health centre, but being a Patient is much more than that. Looking at illness and the healing process leading to health, patience is possibly the most important remedy for any complaint – giving your body and mind time to rebalance.
While quick treatment is vital in the emergeny room, with pretty much all other problems it’s best to allow for a slow approach to getting better. That doesn’t mean that it always has to take forever, but taking copious amounts of drugs to speed up healing is not really what being a patient is about. The best cure for a nasty cold is still to have three days of hot lemon and bedrest. Everything else might be good for the pharmaceutical industry or your employer, but it won’t provide what a sick organism most needs – time.

Fast-food has become almost a religion, we love fast communication, we value fast transport, fast careers, fast growth. Fast, faster – who’s fastest? What is it with our 21^st century’s obsession with speed? What is wrong with slowing down?

Looking up DOCTOR in the dictionary, this is the first definition that comes up: ‘A teacher; one skilled in a profession, or branch of knowledge learned man.’ 'From the latin docere – to teach.’
This means that when you go to a doctor, ideally you would be taught something – that’s what you would expect from a teacher. The reality looks very different though: Impatient patients give the responsibility of THEIR health to the doctor, who takes on the role of a car mechanic – that is, fixing things.
Despite massively increased wealth and scientific advance, the people on this planet are as sick as they always have been. Just the names of the diseases have changed.
The problem is that, really, we have hardly learned anything yet. And how can we, without guidance from a teacher? And without wanting to take responsibility for our own health?

So the next time you see a doctor, ask for some decent advice on how you can improve your health. If your doctor doesn’t want to teach you anything, find someone else who will. Whether it’s helpful information related to diet or exercise, the power of the mind or what to do with gut feelings – there is so much to learn! All we need is a little patience.

Do what you love

There is a book by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt called “The two lifes of Adolf H.” In it, Hitler is portrayed as a young man who had always wanted to become an artist. When he finally applied to art school, he was rejected by…the Jewish director. The rest is history. Creation turned into destruction. Free thinking into an obsession.

What if Adolf H. had been accepted at art school back then? No world war, no holocaust? Maybe instead a new Picasso? Who knows…

A few days ago I saw a photo on Facebook saying, “The world needs more people who do what they love.” I couldn’t agree more. We have so many people stuck in some job they don’t enjoy, how can anything good come out of that? Despite all material wealth the world is hosting less and less happy souls. Depression is quickly becoming the number one disease of our civilization.

When I talk about this with others, often I get told, “yeah, but not everybody can do what they want.” No, not all the time, that’s true. But there’s a big difference between having a shit day at work, and not liking what you do. If you have a shit day, well, let it be a shit day. If you don’t like what you do, change it!

The beauty of humankind lies in its diversity – everybody is different, everybody likes different things, different partners, different jobs. If everybody chose the career they really wanted, there would be very few jobs no-one would want to do. And if we can send somebody to the moon, surely we could come up with a system and technology so that nobody has to do these unwanted jobs.

What happens when you don’t like your work? Over time, you become depressed. And, possibly even worse, you become dull and lose creativity. Creativity that is so desperately needed to solve all of our problems. To evolve into something better. To change.

By not encouraging everybody to do what they desire to do, sadness and destruction are being promoted. Sometimes more sadness, as seen in the many unhappy faces on the streets, and sometimes more destruction – with the extreme example of Adolf H.

So here’s a call for a DO WHAT YOU LOVE revolution. If you spend more time sad than happy while at work, then what’s the point? A waiter who doesn’t want to be a waiter will be a crap waiter. I have met plenty of people who love being waiters, let’s them do it. Same with car mechanics, lawyers, cleaners, doctors, builders, engineers, teachers, farmers, and so on. Not everybody wants to be a football player, musician or president. I have heard that there are even some who still want to be bank managers…

Whatever it is – chose something you love to do and get inspired! And then share this love and inspiration. Spread happiness! Because the world needs it. And life deserves it.

PS: For additional reading I recommend the chapter of ‘The unsuccessful merchant’ in THE LITTLE BUDDHA. Happy X-mas!

Food and Freedom

So the Mayans, or those who have interpreted their calender, were wrong. The 28^th of October has passed by almost unnoticed. The good news – the world hasn’t ended, we are still here. The bad news – nothing has changed. We are in the same situation, almost drowning in our own shit.

What now? Well, I guess one option would be to put faith into the 21^st of December 2012, the next date of big change. But I’m not sure how reliable that is. Another option would be to start digging away the shit surrounding us. But where to begin? There are too many problems to name. To do so, I would have to stop writing stories and blogs and instead produce a whole encyclopedia of stuff that needs to be fixed.
Nevertheless, to start somewhere, here’s a small selection of situations which have to be changed urgently if we ever want to see a better world.

Food logistics
In a recent conversation with an Ex-Senior logistics manager of the biggest Swiss cargo airline, I was told a nice example of the perversity of the present food trade: Tomatoes, grown in Israel, travel via Zürich to Holland. That’s kind of acceptable. But then, similar tomatoes grown in Holland travel the same route to Israel. All in the name of profit…
We, the customers, promote this absurdity by constantly wanting everything to become cheaper and cheaper. Yet should’t food be about quality? Does it make sense that we fuck up the planet only to get fresh strawberries all year round? And is it fair to exploit farmers in poor countries only so that we can save up for a new tele? After all, why should a supermarket manager in France earn more than a farmer who grows the food which is sold on the shelves? It’s actually disgraceful for the human race.

Democracy
I was really disappointed when I read a couple of days ago that the planned referendum in Greece was cancelled. Finally a head-of-state had come to senses and remembered that the voice of the general public ought to be listened to. Always, not only when there are elections. The Greek situation, being hopelessly in debt and slaved to the Euro, is very serious. We’re not talking about which colour the new office of the president should have. It’s an important, far-reaching decision that affects pretty much everybody living in Greece. Maybe they don’t want to pay huge amounts of interests only to keep a currency that is doomed anyway. But thanks to the influence of Merkel, Sarkozy and the other ‘leaders’, the Greek people have been basically told to shut up again. Is that democracy? Is that what Plato had talked about?

Borders
Here’s a little challenge for you: try to explain to a 6-year old the concept of borders. Seriously. I have tried it and failed miserably. Why? Because there is no logical explanation. Borders are just another senseless thing we created.
Many would argue that if you didn’t have nations protected by ‘walls’, everybody from the poor countries would go to the rich ones. But I think this is a misconception. Almost all the people I have met over the years prefer to live in their home countries. Some might enjoy travelling, but only few want to move to a different country. No matter whether they are from Argentina, India, Senegal, Spain or Germany. Now, if some countries become rich because they steal from the poor, leaving them with hardly enough to survive, surely it’s no surprise if the poor start migrating to the rich lands. So to solve the problem of mass immigration we don’t need passport control, but fair trade!
The worst thing about borders is that we are told that we are still free. Yet trying to create freedom and erecting walls at the same time is like trying to create a baby and putting on a condom – it’s totally counterproductive!

What to do? Maybe we should bomb the big supermarkets, kill all politicians and throw away the passport. Alternatively, we could buy local food, stand up for injustice and invite someone from a different country into our home. Opening doors to new possibilities…

Bring it on!

Waiting sucks! Waiting for the bus, for the weekend, for the weather to change. Waiting for an email or message or the Andalusian postman, waiting to get paid, waiting for a woman, waiting for that big idea which will bring wealth and fame. Worst of all – waiting for things to get better.

Fortunately, we might not have to wait much longer. As I read the other day, all of the 2012 prophets have been wrong. Not so much as to what might happen or not, but WHEN. There was a slight miscalculation of 420 days, which, to be fair, can happen when analysing ancient Mayan scripts… I won’t bother you with details – there are a few sites which explain it all, so if you are interested, do a search yourself. Bottom line is this: the date of the Mayan calender ending is not the 21^st of December 2012, but the 28^th of October...come on, guess....correct – 2011! That’s in 10 days.

It’s probably all a whole load of bullshit – if anything, latest by 2012 we will witness the manifestation of a self-fulfilling prophecy where we just blow up the whole planet because we are too stupid to live together as one species.

However, from what I hear, I must say that I have quite a bit of respect for those old Mayan astronomers. Maybe they were indeed able to come up with a system to forecast certain evolutionary cycles. After all, they didn’t have to deal with text messages, tele and taxforms every day and therefore had plenty of time to spend on more interesting aspects of life.

The Mayans never talked about apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenarios. They simply observed patterns when looking at how the universe changes. The energy of the universe effecting anything that lies within it, the Mayans used these patterns to calculate likely events in the future. More often than not, their predictions were totally accurate.

So, what about the 28^th then? What can we expect? Well, if the bloody date is right, if the Mayans were as precise as their reputation, the 28^th of October 2011 will be the day when we complete our Evolutionary Transformation Process. Sounds cool, ay! But what the fuck does it mean?

Well, I guess it just means that something ends and something else starts. Whatever that is. A time or moment which stimulates change, just like the springtime stimulates growth.

So looking 10 days ahead, everything which has started to change already is likely to gain incredible speed and change even more. That might mean a big war, massive demonstrations or a political breakdown. A natural disaster wiping out half of the planet, a global mass panic caused by a solar storm blowing away all satellites and bringing communication to a standstill, or perhaps the final collapse of the world economy. It could also mean that we suddenly wake up on Friday the 28^th and decide that it’s actually much better to live together in peace and harmony. We might realise that borders are totally self-destructive obstacles no one needs and so we simply get rid off them. Or we might become all englightened at the same time, with hell exploding right next to us. Who knows? Maybe some clever species from out of space will finally have mercy and come down to shake us back into sanity.

I don’t know what will happen. Or when. But when I look at my feelings, and when I listen to what others say and feel, I think it’s pretty likely that fairly soon something very important is going to happen. We can’t keep on accelerating forever.

So, rather than waiting and waiting for things to get better and trying to save the world, something which will probably never happen, I say: “Dear Universe and God of all Mayan astronomers, please bring it on!!”

We are ready for change!

Give

I think most of my life I spend searching for something - the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect home. Where are they? Do they actually exist? Can they exist?

It used to be so easy – you took on the job of your Mum or Dad, married somebody from down the road and stayed in the village you were born in. Thanks to globalization and its endless possibilities things look different nowadays. The curse of choice!

Especially in the so-called ‘developed world’, where food and shelter are secured, it seems that new challenges have to be found to justify our presence on this planet. Our strive for perfection gets stronger and stronger, with self-fullfilment becoming our highest goal.

Searching, always searching. The big question is – what happens once we find what we’ve been looking for?

I know very few people who are content with what they have. There is so much desirable stuff out there and so we always feel that we lack something which in turn keeps us from being totally happy.

We want more money and at the same time less material things. More adventure and less risk. More drugs and less illness. More friends and less responsibilities. We hate stress but peaceful times tend to bore us. We are craving security but are constantly afraid of losing freedom. There’s always something we want but can’t have. To sum it up: We are a bunch of truly unsatisfied individuals.

To be honest, I don’t really know what to do about this. One thing which helps though is to shift the focus away from our personal desires. To look around and see if somebody else might need our help. Giving rather than wanting.

It could be a surprise visit to a friend, offering a helping hand, making a compliment or simply sharing an honest smile. Anything which doesn’t involve wanting something which in the end won’t satisfy anyway.

So, once a day, make somebody happy! Perhaps this way, we’ll find happiness ourselves.

Let's turn it around

Last Monday. Yet another rainy summer morning in Germany. To start the week with a good dose of positivity I decided to go online and read the news – what a great decision! Next financial crisis on the doorstep, with a nice double dip straight back into recession. Riots in London, Syria on the edge of civil war, famine in Africa. The resources of the world shrinking, pollution rising, the gap between rich and poor widening – all with lightening speed. I have to say, the week looked promising for someone like me who enjoys real life drama. But the highlight was yet to come...

After clicking quickly through the main headlines I slowed down to read a report about food. Or more precisely, the waste of food. What a lovely and encouraging article! It said that, globally, one third of all food is thrown away. That's right, somewhere between producer and consumer ONE THIRD of all food is being wasted. One problem is storage and distribution – we claim to be able to store nuclear waste safely and DHL delivers whatever we want to any corner of the world, but precious food is lost because we can't store and deliver it properly? Sounds strange.
Anyway, at the consumer end, apart from buying constantly more than we need, one of the main problems that was pointed out was that the sell-by date was making people throw stuff away unnecessarily. If it says on the packet that the yoghurt will expire today, surely I'd die if I ate it tomorrow. Fortunately there is hope on the horizon – new packaging is designed this very moment that will have integrated microchips indicating us through colour changes in the lid what is actually consumable, and what not. Microchips? In yoghurt packaging? What about getting rid off those stupid plastic cups and going back to using good old glass jars, those you can open and close to check the inside yourself? No. It's much better to come up with a really advanced and clever solution – microchips!

It was then that I decided that the world is already screwed beyond repair. I mean seriously, what's the point? Albert Einstein once said that “two things are infinite – the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe...” I think he was right. So rather than going on to try and make the world a better place, fuck it, let's get it over and done with as quickly as somehow possible. The good thing is that we don't even need to change much because all we have to do is to continue doing the stuff we do anyway. Just more of it.

Here are some simple and hopefully helpful suggestions:

1. Buy the cheapest possible food (for example at Lidl and Aldi). This way you make sure that all small farmers will go bankrupt or commit suicide and all food production will be in the hands of a few multi-nationals who can then feed us artificially cultivated crap, ideally genetically modified. Looking at your personal health, especially be aware of buying organic food since this will only prolong the experience on planet Earth unnecessarily.

2. If you buy fresh food, make sure that it comes from the furthest place away so that lots of extra petrol is needed for transport. Remember, the more oil we burn the sooner we leave this hell house.

3. Get free plastic bags whenever you can and throw them away immediately.

4. Get a new phone each year and get rid off your old one, and if you can afford it do the same with your television, computer, ipod, car, washing machine and hair dryer. We need to get these landfills as quickly as full as possible.

5. Drink only bottled water, if possible from one-way plastic bottles. In Germany they have this silly system where you pay deposit and recycle all bottles, even cans. It's a real threat to global pollution.

6. Buy your clothes only in places like H&M, Zara, Decathlon or even better in mega bargain Chinese shops. This way millions of Asian factory workers will die either through intoxication, poverty or suicide. What a great favour you'd do them! Additionally, you will contribute to some very few rich fuckers getting even richer, thus enabling them to spend billions on convincing us to buy even more stuff.

7. As a general rule, consume as much as you can. The economy needs to grow, grow, grow before it can explode. Promote widespread Ikea-sation – that is, buying lots of stuff nobody needs, all dirt cheap and made from non-sustainable sources. If you don't shop until you drop you may be held responsible for delaying the death of human society.

8. Watch more television – reading threatens stupidity.

9. Leave all lights and electrical devices on, always! We gotta use up all these non-renewable energy sources.

10. Make sure your electricity provider uses nuclear energy. The more nuclear power plants there are, the more chances we have of speeding up our self-destruction.

11. Next time you need a haircut, why not fly to a stylish hairdresser in Milan – don't be shy, you deserve it and the planet will love that extra bit of unnecessary pollution.

12. Trash your bicycle and be nasty to cyclists – pinch their wheels and run them over with your SUV. If you don't have a SUV, run them over with whatever vehicle you got.

13. Print out every email and everything you read online, and pick up every free paper and flyer that you come across – these bloody trees need to go, otherwise we'll be here forever.

14. If you have any savings, ask your bank how many weapon companies they invest in. In case it's not a high enough percentage, change your bank. More wars is what we want.

15. Vote politicians who make stupid decisions. Imagine if some clever person gained power, that would be seriously endangering our mission.

16. Finally, don't believe you alone can't make a difference. Every single brainless action helps! And be reminded that it's much easier to destroy than to create, so we have a clear advantage over all those eco freaks.

We don't want the world to change. We want it to end!