A receipt for happy life - day by day

As I was fighting my career into computers, wires, managers, telephones, Bilderberg hotels and dinners with ties at flaming French tables, I managed to glimpse the whole receipt for happy life. We have all seen parts of it but there aren't so many people around who have it complete. Here I will try to share mine - the ingredients are always a bit different so I'd suggest to just think a bit before applying (not too much thinking though - not healthy ;-)).

In computers we start with basic questions when we have to solve a problem. And the first one that really materialized tonight was why are we so afraid of evolution ? Aren't our complicated, unhappy, dull or unsatisfied lives an illusion which is possible to easily fix ? Maybe it isn't so simple, yet it is not complicated either. I have had an interesting life and have managed to learn a few things. One of them is that fear is the worst enemy of the human being, but also sometimes it is our best friend. The big problem with fear in my case is that I quickly adapt to new circumstances and then fear changes into stress. It is probably similar with many people. So as an aggressive type of a person I had to learn to recognize stress - it was not so easy until a couple of years ago. The poison was invisible, yet piling in my bones like lead. At one moment we all get used to different challenges and stress is minimized, hides itself in the fast daily life, but there is one thing which is still capable of triggering a lot of stress in me - change. But not change happening around - this I learned to manage - the biggest stress (or fear) factor is currently my own personal evolution. It has always been.

Personal evolution can be triggered by many factors. The first such factor in my case was going to the kindergarten. My personal specialism as a strange kid was talking. I talked extremely much since my first year and constantly asked questions, all the time. My parents got fed up relatively quickly and then aunts and relatives had to give a hand with the burden (me) :-). One of my aunts had to take me to the kindergarten one early morning. I was between two and three years of age and I decided this was my chance to find someone to free me from the burden of going there. So I started persuading my aunt not to take me to the kindergarten. At the beginning she was amused by the small stubborn kid who would talk almost like an adult. But I wouldn't give up. I'd explain to her how much I loved her and my parents and what hurt and damage they were causing to my little personality by taking me to these strange and often hostile women. It did not take more than 5 minutes before my aunt started crying which only backed up my running tears. But did not stop me from talking. The distance between our houses and the kindergarten was a 15 min walk. The next 5 minutes of the walk were a heavy crying walk with chants on the theme they didn't give a shit and were trying to get rid of me. My aunt ended it claiming I was an indulged crazy kid and ended the "negotiation" with an angry snap. The last 5 minutes were just sadness and tears. I felt like I was being led to a prison. She was just crying. The nasty uniformed bitches at the garden must have had a great time when we appeared in this state at the entrance.

This very bright memory of my first great fear - the fear of having to defend my ground on my own as a 2-year old against evil ladies in uniforms - it was fear of evolution. I was being pushed to deviate from my natural evolution (be close to parents until maturity) and I felt divine fear. But it could be otherwise - it could be much different. The women working at the kindergarten could be more polite and careful, my parents could spend more time with me there at the beginning, etc. This would be a much more "natural" hastened evolution and most importantly - I would have a much better and much happier life, my parents and aunts too. Big time. The only missing factor was change in the attitude and expectations. New times, new model - old behavioral patterns and prejudices - a catastrophe.

Today I look around and I see most of my friends and colleagues quite desperate. Our personal lives suck beyond recognition. In that monotonous gray way which is even a waste of time and ink to describe. Their biggest problem - they are unhappy. My friends at 30 have forgotten what it is someone to fall in love with them, for real. My parents at 60 are repeatedly asking themselves what did they do wrong that God punishes them with not having grandchildren yet (my father is a proclaimed atheist by the way ;-). 60% of my friends and colleagues got divorced in the first 10 years of their marriages. Most of us are unhappy about these things, our lives suck. How do I know? We don't have good time. Boring, dull, routine, presumably comfortable lives - maybe. I rarely meet people with energy though - with genuinely happy faces who would walk the street with a slightly dreamy smiling expression, who would notice the birds and rats chasing each other playfully around the expensive cars.

So how do we lose energy for life ? Why are we so unhappy ? With me it is fear and negative stress. We know that but we don't want to really hear it anymore. This knowledge does not help much as it is. Just the opposite - fear of fear and stress is even worse than fear itself. This is a very common condition in the place I live. I know it sounds crazy and too simple but it is so. But what do we fear so much in our modern lives? We fear we may lose comfort since it is a very tricky balance to keep nowadays - comfort. The biggest problem with comfort is that it is a feeling created by the perception of security. In all organic creatures' genes the feeling of security is connected with change in the environment - the less change (especially unexpected) the less fear and stress. So we are always careful for the security factors to be in place - if something changes even slightly we become alert. Everybody knows this and things should be simple. They are.

The first changes we notice in our daily lives are technological today. In order for the public to not be afraid of the technological change and embrace it bravely, massive advertisement and amusement propaganda is engaged. Still change is difficult since it increases the fear factor in our lives - people react and become more stubborn and immune to ads about the change by the day. Then the advertisers target different groups and develop new methods of enforcing the technological change onto society and we fight back, we spill resources to lead a sad life in war. Ironically technological change is often very positive - you do not have to make a bigger effort than go to the kitchen and you have water from the tap for example. Only this simple change frees more than 15 min a day in your schedule. So even if we are afraid of change it is often good. Another example are robots in today's manufacturing - risky or dull jobs are now done by robots, freeing time and resources. Education is what helps differentiate the real dangers from positive change. Real education - not the censored dull thing we receive at today's schools which only focuses on production effectiveness, not on how to lead a happy normal life.

And this is the point where we reach the heart of the problem. Technology is imposing huge changes onto the daily life of society yet this society is strictly pre-programmed for fear towards changes. Pre-programmed by institutions. Thus people learned to call a friend instead of sending a letter but what did they do with the spare time ? Some people started learning to kill time - as advertised on TV. Just consume as an individual or a couple or a small family and repeat the same actions in loops. Others had time to think of ways to ruin their social lives. There were many lured by the ancient standards of historic religious/political institutions to find an empty road to a thorny illusion. Still no one got much happiness. Not many smiling faces in the streets. Somehow its not logical - we are so much richer in possibilities and capacities but yet we are unhappy, tired, bored, unmotivated, gray.

And I think it is all because of fear. We are afraid of the change - the world around us is a part of us and we are a part of it. When technology around us changes - it changes our lives, it changes our habitat, it changes our routines. Yet we do not want to admit it to ourselves. We insist on technology evolving but life staying the same. Its not possible. I remember a family back in Sofia shortly after the change to democracy. They moved to a flat from some village, into the heart of Sofia, where they bred a couple of sheep on the balcony. You know, for the milk and later maybe more ;-) . Somehow they refused to accept that people in Sofia would get milk from the store for the last hundred and fifty years at least. I still remember the stories of them dragging the poor stupid animals down the stairs for a walk. I don't even dare imagine the fanfare returns of the herd - this was the joke of the decade of quite a busy quarter ;-).

So why didn't these people want to accept that times were better and they needn't torture the animals and themselves in the heart of a modern city? Why is it then that we continue torturing ourselves with similar mistakes everyday when it is so simple to see the stupidity? Why is it so difficult to say to ourselves the world is different today. Maybe the time has come to accept that women are not just cooking tits and asses while men are not just cumbags smelling of beer ? And why do we insist on the old model of family when in reality our children spend most of their aware time away from their families - in kindergartens, schools, institutions of society and we lost most of our influence on their education? Why do women insist on the ideal of the prince on the horse taking care of all issues, capable of kissing and slapping them while at the same time every single woman has raised at least a mini feminist bitch in herself compared to whom Coco Chanel looks like a kitty ? And why do men have these piles of artificial muscles when they are ready to beg and please and knee and sleaze just for a boring glimpse of two white tits outside of a disco? When I was a teenager it was normal for us to fuck in front of everyone at parties - we wanted love and we just made love, nowadays kids have to beg to see tits? How can these kids grow into men? How can these women not grow into whores if they expect to be paid for their tits? I don't have an idea, that's too complex for me. I like simple "shit" I can handle. For me sex is an active physical act of pleasure, I have issues handling illusionary sex - its boring. Boring as a synonym of stupid.

Times change and time goes by. I can choose to be depressed or I can choose to realize that we have evolved since we created this more developed technology. And when we grow - we have all been kids - its difficult but this is what life is about, to me at least. And this is what makes it so interesting and great. Once upon a time I had a couple of friends in a small town in Bulgaria. Then I got a couple of more in Sofia. Then some more in Prague, now Berlin. And it sucked - finding and keeping them was not easy but paid off million-fold since no money can buy you friendship. And this is the key to happiness - we as a society have come to a stage where we do not need to think about the material so much any more, we need to concentrate on the more important - the spiritual. Like happiness, love, friendships - not the illusionary institutions, the real feelings charging you with positive energy for life. Yes - you read right. Since the 19th century humanity has so much spare resources it does not know what to do with them. In the 20th century it overproduced massively and made wars to negate the overproduction. Now we have a second chance - a new millennium. We can choose to invest our spare resources into enjoying our lives or into destroying them. We can choose to provide for ourselves by working for a couple of hours a day and spend the rest of the time on bringing up-to-date personal evolution. A walk in the hills or going to the opera is evolution for most of the people today. We can also accept that maybe our old idea of the most important of all institutions - the family - is outdated and seems a bit perverse today and it is time to live in a more evolved - more adult way. Why do we still insist on an ideal for the family structure and relations which has been born in the times of slavery and copies the logic of slavery ? This is one of the reasons you sign a marital contract - you are not a free person anymore. This does not sound correct nowadays - does it? You are not free anymore..... So why do we still want to stick to all its old rules - why don't we update them ? Why do we insist on being sexually faithful to one person when even the kids nowadays know that no human being is capable of being in love with one person for more than three years ? Are we really so weak as individuals that we need to own and be owned in order to feel comfort and safety, therefore we are ready to live in illusions, stop evolving and continue fighting? Is really signed paper so much more important than trust ? More important than life itself for the purpose of which it was initially created? Why is it that we forgot how to trust people but we did not forget how to possess people? And can we really trust ourselves if we can not trust anybody else ?

Such questions make me sad and depressed, I hate them. And we do not need to love them, we do not need to think about them - we know the answers. We are just not sure about the implementation. Well, in Prague I learned to be a realist and this is where I learned how to live happily. I do not fool myself anymore. I know I cannot afford kids given my family situation and the state of the institutions nowadays. My little personal freedom and time (as an immigrant) would also be severely damaged so I just accept it and don't worry. There are so many other kids in this world - it does not matter they are not mine, even the kids born by us are not possessed by us anymore - the difference is only in the time spent together which is getting lesser by the day anyway. I also live with one person for a very long time and since day one I fully realize that people change and I do not expect to own the passion of that other person for a lifetime. So I am happy - I do not occupy myself with the thought that my partner would be cheating on me, I know the reality and I do not expect illusions to materialize. No one can be the perfect prince after all, especially when the idea of perfection evolves so quickly nowadays so how can I expect someone to fall in love with me over and over again - that's insane ;-).

So it is the same with society - we can choose to be a happy and developing society or we can choose to live in an illusion and disappointment. We know we are being cheated on by bankers, politicians, media - its their job to cheat us which we created and support. You do not want to be cheated - do not support their jobs (of cheating). We can also choose to lie to ourselves but then we need to ask for help from time to time - "How was I tonite darling? Was the fuck good?". If you need to ask then it was a disaster. Same with life - if I ask you how is life and I really mean the question (not just saying a polite phrase) - then its bad, real bad. I remember very well we never asked each other as kids how life was - neither each other nor grown ups. Most of the people were happy and smiling so we didn't need to ask such a boring question. We asked when we saw a long face.

So what changed since then? Everything. Then do our expectations of institutions have to be the same ? Aren't institutions expected to develop in the same way as technology ? I think they should be - as we know from the economy producing our technology - institutions provide services and services also evolve, not just technology. Therefore our institutions should evolve or we face a catastrophe. It is insane to have banks working in almost the same way as a thousand years ago when the motor engine did not even exist as a concept. Our institutions and our expectations of them are very ancient and are dragging our society towards a collapse - the modern marital institution was last updated by Caligula and Marc Antonius two thousand years ago when daily routines, tasks and priorities were different - why do we expect this institution to be adequate today ? The modern corporation model was created by the Mussolini fascist regime - it was designed to treat people like animals. So why are we surprised we are being treated increasingly like animals? Why do we expect this institution (corporations) to function effectively almost one hundred years and at least three huge technological revolutions later ?

It is so simple and yet so difficult. The only reason for all this confusion is fear - fear from the change. Maybe in order to handle it better we should slow our technology development for some time and concentrate on the update of institutions - social, political and economic. And for this change to happen we do not need society - each and every one of us can do it separately. I simply started thinking and leading my life in a new way - I try to limit the involvement with outdated institutions (realizing it is not the 18th century anymore) and life becomes more fun. So to wrap it up - the receipt is the following :

Institutions are what you make them - your attitude towards them decides their role in your life. So banks, governments, courts, corporations, churches, family, nation - these are what you want them to be in your life. You want them new and updated - you have them, there is nothing to do - just change your thoughts and attitude and you live in a new happier world. Yes - people around will want to stick to their illusions. That's fine - live and let live. Your life was given to you under the condition you will make with it what YOU want. If you sell out the punishment is sadness, disappointment, depression, boredom and I do not want to look back at my life one day and see a big grayness. I don't have to. Why ?

Protože ... tohle je můj život! :-)