Two persons move together. Love is in the air. But in addition to all the romantic cuddling on the couch, this means that from now on, they are sharing the household duties. No problem, they are a modern couple and decide to share them equally. Both hate doing them, so this way of distributing them [...]
Have you ever swam through icy waters fully clothed and without a life jacket to drag to the shore an unconscious woman who you never met before? Jack Casey has. In the course of two years he responded as a volunteer to more than five hundred emergency calls ending up saving people from burning buildings [...]
Ok, let’s have a take on this age-old mystery. The answer is in fact quite simple. The meaning of life is to make oneself meaningful to other people. It’s about making a positive contribution in the lives of those people one holds dear. Why? I’ll tell you why. To start with, we need to focus [...]
Modern western societies have been characterized by individualism. It is said that no other time or place has seen such a strong form of cultural individualism than what we are experiencing right now. But what does this individualism mean? And have we actually forsaken the liberating promises that this individualism originally held for us? Modern [...]
“Here stand I, I cannot otherwise!” Threatened with excommunication Martin Luther stood in front of the Emperor Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire and was asked to take back his interpretation of scriptures because they defied the power of the pope. Martin requested some time to think, prayed, consulted a few friends and gave [...]
Take whatever book or article that reports the results of recent scientific research on happiness. One conclusion they have in common is that social relationships are what make people happy or unhappy. Here’s Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard, for example: “If I had to summarize all the scientific literature on the causes of [...]
I haven’t updated this blog for a while because I was fully absorbed in one of the greatest miracles of my own personal life: The birth of my first child! To keep up with the philosophical intentions of this blog I will resist the temptation to proclaim to everyone how wonderful event this was, how [...]
What makes a life good? The question is quite broad, we can admit that. One might answer by listing nice things; a cappuccino at a pleasant café on a Sunday afternoon, a gathering of good friends at the summer cottage and so forth. But there is also a deeper question: What do we mean by [...]
I wrote a sentence in my last post that started to haunt me. The sentence was: ‘Most of the dreams we are really committed to work for are actually achievable.’ Do I really believe it to be true? Isn’t that something that all those cheap happy-happy-self-help-gurus proclaim with their false smiles? On the other hand, [...]
What are the most awesome things that you definitely want to do before you finally ‘hit the bucket’? Answering this question right now can be a revealing or even life-changing experience. I’ll tell you why and then you’ll have an exclusive look at the 20 items that ended up on my own personal bucket list. [...]
19th December 1941 Sergeant-Major John Robert Osborn showcased the ultimate limits of human heroism As his group became divided from the main battalion in the hills of Hong Kong and had to withdraw against an overwhelming enemy he stayed behind to single-handedly engage the enemy while others ran to safety. After joining the others they [...]
Have you ever wondered what is the most fundamental question for you or for any human being? There are a few candidates but in the end only one stands a closer scrutiny. The nominees that come most readily in mind are the classic questions about the origin of the world, about what exists fundamentally and [...]
The American couple Eve and John had just settled into the unstable northern Uganda and were invited to a dinner in their friends house. Suddenly, a huge blast penetrated the night and made everybody jump up and drop their forks. Eve got scared but everyone else seemed to be very nonchalant about the event. Their [...]
You know the frustration when you overcome your fear, manage to do a great performance – and then your friend tells you: “Oh sorry, the camera malfunctioned and I didn’t get any pictures!” Me too. And that means that we are the victims of our modern culture that emphasizes images instead of actual living. I [...]
What are you going to do when you grow up, I asked the 17 years old José Angel in the remote countryside village of Lagartillo in Northern Nicaragua. What I got for an answer was an enthusiastically delivered two-hour long lecture about the revolutionary history of Nicaragua and how radios played a central role in [...]
In the Tortuga Boluuda hostel in Léon, Nicaragua, I was examining a Land Rover Defender parked outside when an English gentleman arrived on the scene. It turned out that he and his wife were on a two year long car trip around the world that had already taken them through the whole Asia and was [...]
Have you heard the famous story about a Harvard business graduate and a poor fisherman? If not, start by reading it. Because already twice this trip I have felt that I’ve met a living example from that story. Yesterday, finding myself in the home of a twenty-something fisherman on the small coral island of Caye [...]
On his well-earned holiday, a Harvard business graduate watched how a small fishing boat approached the harbor in a small coastal Mexican village. It was still late morning but the boat was full of fish so he asked how long time did it take to catch them? “A few hours.” “And what are you going [...]
At twenty she was a bourgeois upperclass girl, married and with one child, living just the kind of ordinary life that was expected of her. At twenty-four she had published an award-winning book of poetry that shocked with its erotic imagery – and was tailed by secret police because she had joined Sandinistas, a rebellious [...]
At first sight death seems to be the opposite of good life – it is quite literally the end of it. But philosophers throughout the times have known that by acknowledging one’s own mortality one is able to rid oneself of the trivialities of everyday life and chains of conventionality to live a more authentic, [...]
I’ve now spent some time on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Mostly it has been a great time – I’ve enjoyed the calm sea, the beautiful small villages, the friendly people – but what has constantly irritated me is the fact that almost everyone I talk with wants my money. I walk around the village [...]
Sea is my element. If I haven’t fully understood it before, now I know it. Having stayed inland for more than three weeks I remember the sudden burst of excitement I got when I first filled my lungs with the salty smell of the sea on the way towards Bluefields on the Atlantic coast of [...]
What can we learn about good living from Pablo Neruda, the greatest Latin American poet? Reading his autobiography I argue that at least for me the most important lesson is about learning to embrace the richness and beauty of life. From the way he depicts his life-story one can’t fail to see that here is [...]
Examining the backyards of some Nicaraguan countryside homes led me to think about the role that aesthetics plays in good life. These backyards – quite frankly – were far from aesthetic. I do not know how representative they are of the country as a whole but at least in these ones various forms of garbage [...]
To balance the melancholy of the last post, here is an opposite story. Few days after the blackouts in the beach bar, I traveled onwards to León attracted by its reputation as the capital of intellectual and cultural life of Nicaragua. Whilst there, I went to eat alone in a local bar serving food even [...]
The problem with being in your home town is that it is hard to spend time alone in a bar. Always when I try to do it, some friend or acquaintance pops into the same bar. As being alone in a bar is considered somewhat weird – as if you would not have any friends [...]
At four thirty on a Saturday evening I am waiting in the Park Morazán as agreed. Soon somebody calls my name and I step into a car quite unaware of our destination. We drive away from the center of San José, into one of its slums. There among the simple houses is one with the [...]
During my first days in San José, the capital of Costa Rica, I did what I always like to do when arriving to a new city and culture: I wandered around aimlessly through the streets, looking at people in their everyday activities hoping to capture something of the local atmosphere. What I found startling here [...]
Dios te ama – God loves you! With these words I was greeted into Costa Rica after my long flight. The mystery about Costa Rica that I travelled across the Atlantic to solve is about happiness. According to different polls, namely, Costa Ricans are a happy bunch of people. In Gallup’s much quoted Global Well-being [...]
The hardest part of a journey is usually the start. This is true in two senses of the word: Firstly, there are always so many excuses not to travel – the lack of money, risks ahead, study, work or family commitments and so forth – that many people never leave their home. These are obstacles [...]
Sometimes a man has to go. Sometimes a man needs a purpose to go. I am going to Central America, to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The purpose of my journey is to learn more about the local culture, the way they live their lives and the way they think about vital issues such as happiness, [...]
