The opener of my first post will be the sufficiency strategy which is closely connected with the mother named sustainability, and became greater importance for me in the year 2014.
The shutter release was a five-month trip through South America that opened softly but definite my eyes to the wealth of and in my life.
I saw for the first time begging, shoe-cleaning and drug-taking kids, got threaten with a knife because I ran after the 15 year old boy who stole my backpack.
I never felt proper insecurity in form of fear and panic as in that moment which was a key-moment in my life.
Until that time I didn´t know that I am part of the richest 2 to 5 percent of this world which is actually hard to comprehend.
The globalisation represented me - the developed part of the world to that uruguayan teenager – the developing part of the world and set the beginning of a certain awareness and critical thinking,
That key-moment and the conversations back at Buenos Aires in the shared flat where I lived for 3 weeks showed me that the European living standards are one of the highest worldwide. I felt ashamed and stupid after I realised how common and normal that was always for me.
As nothing in life has only one aspect, the globalisation also introduced me to the immense hospitality where I couldn´t get why citizens of a such a big city like Buenos Aires are much more friendlier and supposed to help than in the small city Vienna back home.
Or where my new Brazilian friend gave me for 19 hours non-stop, a free ride from one part of Brasil to the other part of this enormous country.
Through travelling slowly slowly I got a slight understanding that in reality we humans on this earth
aren´t equal, life’s doesn´t count the same.
My life seems to count more than the majority of life’s on this eart…if I am sick, or have an accident at home or abroad, I, my family, my life insurance will have the necessary money or influence for my treatment or emergency transport back home.
I have more freedom than the majority on this earth because of the high life standards and my “golden passport” that allows me to travel to quite all the countries I want.
In developing countries only few of the population have the opportunity to travel abroad.
Ok…I got it! I felt bad, angry, sad and helpless about such the global unfairness I partly saw and finally realised!
In search of the guilty one soon I gave up because I will never find only one, but a complex construction of giant corrupt companies and politicians, driven-market forces, war and many other things I won´t never defeat.
In search of my own beliefs, the optimal culture, lifestyle, and sense of life I found out that I´m so attracted in developing countries because of the humility, openness, flexibility and joy I saw and felt there which is always harder to find in my western wealthy, standardized and everything-regulated country.
But again: there are always two sides; so I started to appreciate and use the advantages in my country, focused on the simplicity which means that I limited drastic my consumption respectively consumed in a specific way especially food, clothes and electronic devices trying to respect the social and ecological conditions of the product chain.
In the city I moved exclusively by bike and reduced the time spending on digital media.
I felt enrichment instead of restriction through this shift of my lifestyle.
And this summer I started my Southeast-Asian trip. Which challenges I had to face referring to the lifestyle I described and how I implemented it to my trip I will reveal in part 2...coming soon...
Interested in the german version?
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