Tag: copass

Sense of perspective

Posted on by philipdodson

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Travel can be great for giving you a true sense of perspective on your life, especially when you travel to a developing country. I am currently in Bali at the Copass camp and today we travelled from the luxury of our resort to the Ulun Danu Bratan Temple.

During our journey there and back several things struck me, fortunately not literally.

One thing, for example, the population of Bali is over 4 million and for a small island that means the roads are pretty crowded, and the drivers do not follow the highway code in quite the same way we are used to in the sanitised developed world. They love their scooters, a cheap and an easy way of navigating the traffic. But for those not used to this, they would look with amazement when one passes laden with children, gas cylinders and a surprising number of adults and other items, none of the passengers wearing a helmet and travelling in the wrong direction in monsoon style rain.

The majority of the population here are poor and their day-to-day existence is tough, yet blind to the world we live in, most seem contented and cheerful. Although, that does not mean that their lives could not be improved by a better system of wealth distribution. That is a whole new topic for another time.

Many in the developed world would almost hyperventilate, in an often phoney hysteria, one which has been cultivated by a society that has risen well above Maslow’s basic needs, to an elevated part of the triangle, where we question ‘why we are here’. The bottom section of food and shelter has been replaced by date codes and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Our fear based media and society has us worrying about flu’s, insects, bugs that will leap from the toilet and eat us. We worry about the sell-by dates, we fear terrorism, we fear almost everything. Yet if we lived or experienced more or the world that billions live in daily, then we would worry less about the mundane.

We would be less fearful, we would be a lot more grateful for what we have and we would be happier with what we have.

We focus our energies on what we do not have, when compared to most people on the planet, we have it all and more.

We would focus more on people, activities and shared experiences and a whole lot less on material stuff and many more unimportant things.

2 channels on your TV

Posted on by philipdodson

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Last night we all went out to eat in Bali at a local restaurant, after dinner, I was chatting with the owner of the place. Like all the people I have met in Bali, they are very friendly and seem to be happy people.

We were stood in front of this old TV, it looked similar to the ones from my childhood, and I remarked that when I was little (the 1970’s!!! omg), that there were only 2 channels on the TV. The man laughed and remarked ‘now there are 100’s’.

I used to have a subscription to SKY, which had 100’s of channels. I cancelled that subscription a few years back, as I realised I had become a slave to TV. I was exchanging my real life for a soulless experience.

Apparently we watch on average 4 hours a day of TV!!! That is just over a full 24 hour day a week. When we had just 2 channels, I probably watched an hour or so a day. The rest of the time as a child I played and used my imagination.

The next challenge is that having stopped watching TV, perhaps an hour a week now, I have like many replaced it with the internet, ironic as I am typing a blog that I will publish on the internet for others to read.

It is now time to start replacing time spent looking at the internet, with real life. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and what it could do. I am also aware of the fact that we kid ourselves that we have changed when we have replaced one soulless experience with another.

If we only had a few things to look at on the internet, like the 2 TV channels of 1970s Britain, think just how much more we could do in life. Just think of all that imagination we would have to use.

Imagination is what brought the human race to where we are, let’s hope the 100’s of channels and billions of web pages do not kill imagination for good.