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I am very grateful, and I feel very fortunate. I just came back from a one week trip to Los Cabos Mexico.

Feeling Joy

  • Escaping the grey weather.

  • Being in such a beautiful exotic surrounding with palm trees, clear blue sky, and wales playing in the deep blue of the ocean.

  • Meeting people, experiencing different cultures.

  • Nurturing body and mind with time to pause, delicious food and sweet drinks.

  • Sharing this experience, spending time with the person I love, sharing happiness, and the path we are on together…

Maybe it is my upbringing or maybe it is my personality—to doubt, to dig deeper, to question things that most people simply accept or take for granted. But I just couldn’t stop thinking “Do I deserve this?”.

Comes with Guilt

  • Getting on an airplane burning tons of fuel to travel.

  • Staying in a desert using up water to maintain artificial greenery and swimming pools.

  • Being served by low wage locals.

  • Eating unlimited food transported from all over the world again burning tons of fuel.

  • Eating meat.

  • Destroying my health by drinking sugar and alchohol.

  • Supporting an industry, local economy propped up by all this tourism that is only possible because of the long history of inequality.

Maybe it is the unbreakable laws of physics, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Or as in the laws of thermodynamics, Entropy, inequality is necessary to create the flow of money energy. Light cannot exist without darkness, opposing emotions, conflicting goals, no pain no gain, yin and yang? Is my joy, wants and choices causing suffering?

So I ask Big Questions

  • Can I have joy without guilt?

    • Where does my joy come from?

    • Where does my guilt come from?

  • Can everyone be rich without anyone being poor?

  • Can everyone be rich enough to travel and enjoy the world?

    • Would that mean it is going to be too expensive to travel?

    • Would that destroy the world?

  • Can you have the positive without the negative? Can you have cake and eat it too?

  • Do I deserve this? Is this worth it? Maybe the world could be a better place if more people ask this question? More we question, more we ponder, more we say “What if”, “How might we”…

I understand reality as a continuous spectrum of differences. I think this is a useful model of reality. This allows me to believe that things can always be better. Rather than inequality what if we celebrate diversity as the source of flow of energy. Maybe we can shift over the entire world towards a positive human experience. What If we were to redesign Joy from scratch?

  • What if we have abundant renewable energy and transport to move freely without causing harm?

  • What if food and transport can be abundant, renewable, responsible?

  • What would responsible Travel, Tourism, look like?

  • How can I create more of the best parts of my travel experience—sharing it with loved ones.

  • How can we have less of the side effects, or harms?

  • What about fear, distrust, caused by - scams, price gouging, theft?

Seems like most of my questions comes down to the basics…

  • Energy - abundant, renewable

  • Food, water - security, responsible

  • Equality - fairness, access, opportunities