Have a meaningful life!

It is night, we are at 100 KM from Puno on a bus, at 4,000 meters in the Peruvian Andes. The bus is cozy and the temperature is good although outside are at most 5 degrees. We have planned for this trip for months and now we are here. The bus is advancing through the mountains and I am a bit dizzy with a mild headache.

You know that you might die if you don’t do the shift from low altitude to high altitude gradually? I thought that was not entirely true until I couldn’t catch my breath when we were at 4,200 meters…now I believe it.

Although this is the best bus we’ve been on so far (we had a 12 hour trip in a bus that smelled badly like a toilet) and I should be happy because of the temperature, the blanket, the meal, the clean bathroom and the Hollywood movie playing on the screen, I am not.

I am not unhappy, I am just in that state of mind when you realise that you are missing out on so much of the world by living without knowing what else it is out there, how little your life matters and how your life does not make any difference to the world, you are just sand in the sand of the sea.

Life here is scarce but not in a sense one might imagine, in the sense that there are people living at 4,000 meters in a room of 8 sqm with their entire family. What are they doing here? They have been here long before time and this is how their life has been for many thousands of years and here I come …the “modern” man to disturb this.

How do I disturb? By travelling in the way I do, by eating the things I eat, by wearing the clothes I wear, by being driven by “having “ the nature instead of “being” together with the nature. What do I mean and why do I sound crazy…it is an easy answer…

Earlier in the day I was looking for a souvenir to take home…and because we are in Peru and the star here is alpaca, I was looking for something from alpaca.

Alpaca is a very soft wool which is given by the animals with the same name living in Peru and Bolivia at high altitudes. These animals are higher and bigger than sheep, similar with lamas as they are from the same family but a bit smaller. You can make from their soft wool and skin a lot of things but mainly incredibly soft and high quality clothes. There are even different types of alpaca wool classified by softness and the softest is what they call baby alpaca, the wool taken from alpacas when they are very young. The animals live  under very tough conditions, there are extreme winds here which at 3 degrees over 0 make you feel you are in a snow storm, your hands freeze immediately, your knees and ears the same, your lips bleed. I must tell you that this wool is not easy to obtain, the animals are very sensitive although one might think that living in this altitude makes them tough, well, they are very sensitive to disease which comes more often here because of me and my style of life…as now the temperatures have risen here and the animals are getting sick easily.

So I was looking for a souvenir to take home from this very soft wool, maybe a sweater, a scarf, a toy…and I found of course one as they are everywhere in the city I was (Arequipa, Peru). I found a pillow cover from the skin and wool of baby alpaca which I bought for what I find now a very small price…70 SOL (20 USD)… compared to the work of raising the animal, treating the skin and sowing it. The sweaters which I liked were very expensive….more than 240 SOLs and even going to 500 SOL (120 USD)…at least for me.

Going back to the present moment, being in the bus and passing at this altitude through the flocks of alpacas, I have begun thinking how much of my 70 SOL are going to the people that actually raise these beautiful animals that give this precious wool. How much of my money is going to the people that work at this altitude in this wind and in these incredibly hard conditions…probably not much.

From this state of mind thinking about alpacas….to me not being happy because I am having this incredible experience and this incredible trip you might think it is a very long way. Well…it is just a step.

Working in Europe, even if it is in Romania has its benefits. It’s well paid and you can have almost everything that man has invented.

In Europe nobody works under these conditions and we have much more than these people would even be able to dream….so why?…why can’t we share the wealth we have with the world? why can’t the people working here have special outfits that protect them from the arctic life? have income similar to ours and have a life that is not a race for survival? Because you know….this is what it is happening here….a race for survival.

I am thinking now that through being who I am, I am not helping these people being better and I could do more, much more than I am currently doing.

This is what is on my mind right now…why are we driven by having… when we should be driven by being…..being together with and for our human kind, for and together with the world we are inhabiting.

I encourage people of really going to visit Peru in a way that makes a positive difference: buying from the small artisans, paying the right price, bargaining less and really appreciating the extremely tough and modest conditions these people live in. Why? Because they are in sync with the nature, they do not rise the seas, they do not blur the sky. They are one with the nature, breeding animals of the place, living small and meaningful.

I am publishing this article more than one year and a half after returning from Peru, it has been a great experience but unfortunately I have not learned much from it. Since then I have worked more and because of that I have been less happy about it. Now I am begging to start balancing my life again and get involved in the things that really matter to society – progress in sync with nature. It is not an easy task. It is nice to remember sometimes how cozy and easy our western life is and how hard other people live but how happy they are.

Have a meaningful life!