I see the dark

A few years ago I sat down at the computer in my hotel room in the Southern tip of Korea and, with a map on the screen, I set out to find where I would live. My criteria were: high gdp per capita, high education per capita, not too highly religious, and favourable weather - namely it couldn't rain too much and it had to get to at least 20 degrees in Summer. I ended up choosing Sweden, particularly Gothernburg and Malmo because they were warmer than Stockholm and they also had the advantage of having some major management consultancies nearby, which I thought was the direction I was heading in at the time.

Roughly 3 years later I moved to Canberra and felt like I had found what I'd wanted. The gdp, the education, no problems with religion, and good weather too. Farmers' markets, community gardens, museums, art galleries, yoga; a cultural oasis, not the breadth and depth of Melbourne or Sydney, but compensated for by the absence of the seedier side of those bigger cities.

Today I realized that Canberra isn't without a darker side. I've been out to some of the rougher suburbs but have never hung around long enough to get much of a feel for them, but today I was stuck at a bus stop not too far from my work and I saw the same signs of poverty and hardship that I've seen a fair bit of in Brisbane. Nothing extreme of course, just frustrated young guys acting threateningly, people with mental illness, a mum and her teenage kids yelling at each other. But still, it was a wake up call. I already knew that there's government housing spread all around Canberra, including across the street from me, in fact the police were outside my house this morning talking to a guy, but it was this afternoon that really brought home that Canberra has city-problems too. It's a work in progress like the others, it needs work and committed citizens and volunteers to do it. Probably a good thing really... we all like a project.

At the same time, I had a stark reminder of just how much we dictate our own happiness. The mum and her kids got on the same bus as me, sitting several rows apart from each other. The kids kept calling out, 'Mum, mummmm, mum! Mumm'. When they got off, the bus driver said to them 'be good to your mum, hey?', and then patiently answered the young girl's questions about this and that. The family lit up a bit and waved as the bus pulled away. When I got off, the driver and I had a quick chat and he smiled and laughed. Bus drivers aren't known for being warm and personable and the meeting reminded me of a quote (that I've now found), "The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition, and not our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go." - Martha Washington, the first First Lady of the US. Of course, there are plenty of other quotes to say the same thing, but it always bears remembering and it's nice to be reminded by someone living it - the local friendly bus driver.
 

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Apr 03, 2011
caroline said...
hallo
good to read of you here. I'm tacking towards that same state now - just where, and what, to be next - but with a summer criterion at least 16 degrees above yours. Maybe I can brainstorm this with you one day.
Canberra has been a strange sojourn for me.

You've reminded me that buses are great environments - so many separate lives and being-nesses going on at once (including the driver's) - concentrated in one space, just for a moment.

On tangents on happiness - I am a bit taken aback when friends allude that that state is their sum objective in life. There seems to be simply too much randomness, too much rawness for that to really be attained in an engaged way, I think. Joy, though, living the joy in the small moments (sounds, kindnesses, clear thought, verse, beauty) is nearer to something real I think. Hmmn, starting to ramble here.

c

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