The alternatives for a better life. And how to find them.

I’m looking for alternatives. I admit it. What alternatives, you say? Alternatives to a better life, perhaps. Or more precisely, an even better life.

I’m 62 years old this year. Life happened fast. Experiences that I have had have brought me to where I am today.

Good experiences, some not so good experiences.

Me in the sixties. Unknown photographer. (Probably my aunt)

Ecuador 2019 By Andrea H Braa

I am a “reader”. By that I mean that I have had an interest in acquiring knowledge all my life. It started with me cracking the reading code relatively early. That meant I could read as a 6 year old.

When I started school, I was a skilled reader. The books we were given were meant to last the entire school year. I finished reading them during the first month. (If they were interesting, of course.)

History, and the stories in my country’s language, Norwegian, were very exiting, I remember. I read the history book in a week. No wonder some of the lessons got boring for me. We usually got a chapter in homework and the homework I had usually done when the school bell rang.

I do not say all this to brag. I was not really a good student. I struggled to get good grades throughout. All the way up to university level. Then I started to get better at it. In retrospect, I have asked myself why and the answer is simple. At the university level, I started studying things I was actually interested in. Interpersonal communication. Psychology. Writing.

But this is a different story. Back to the alternatives. In the last week I have seen the following youtubestories and read a dozen of articles.

Nate Myrphy (the vanlifer) and in the other end, Alan watts (dead philosopher) is among them

Ecuador 2019 By Andrea H Braa

Both Nate and Alan Watts (two people at each end of both philosophical knowledge, age and generation) made me think:

The fact that life is short, I knew on an intellectual level, and also on a practical level.

I was 13 years old, a moment later, twenty and then I closed my eyes, was immortal and opened them again and here I am.

Almost sixty years old.

So yes, I know both intellectually and in practice that life is very short. So short that we do not have time for nonsense. By nonsense I do not mean that we do not have time to play, on the contrary, we should do that more often.

By nonsense I mean that we should not spend time being scared, being bitter, being angry, irritable and all the things we all know we should not be, but as we usually are most of the time if you are a normal human being with a normal everyday life, in a normal life.