PROLOGUE ~
(from: THE DIRECTIONS TO HAPPINESS: A 135-Country Quest for Life Lessons)
I have felt the lungs of the world expand, and this is my exhale. Our planet is trying to tell us something. There is a global disconnect of understanding, as we are often led to believe that the world is an unwelcoming place. I’m not a preacher, a guru, or a therapist but a working-guy explorer on a cross-continental mission, a messenger sharing the local bliss that’s always out there, if you know where to dig. By asking the right questions—or the wrong ones—I’ve discovered what keeps people striving for their dreams.
Pursuing and compiling these teachings reminded me that diversity is a great teacher. There are volumes of inspiring life lessons that have yet to be published, televised, or digitized. Gems of understanding have been passed down through generations to the people you’ll soon meet on these pages. Capturing simple moments that inform without leaning on arcane dogmas, I’m inviting you on a world-ranging holiday to far-flung places away from the gadgets that threaten to disengage us from our deeper senses and sensibilities.
This isn’t about my quest for happiness, though the hunt for how others find their joy inspires mine. Wisdom from a stranger fires the imagination—individuals in strange lands often have the power to realign our beliefs.
Patriotism should be redefined as improving every country, not just our own. That’s why I strive to be a frontline worker in the battle against bad news and boredom. I’ve explored our world tailing timeless news—some people call it “travel writing.” Mobile street anthropology reveals what happens when curiosity conquers the fear of the unknown.
It’s easier to behold what people really think once you cut to the chase. Thanks to a merry vagabond I met while hitching across Australia, I’ll never forget that the real measure of wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money. Likewise, a musical encounter in the Philippines taught me that the enlightened never ask who is teacher and who is student. And, I won’t soon forget when a self-proclaimed Honduran expert in pirate chic declared, “If you have to ask what’s hip—you’re not!” These life lessons from seven continents double as contemporary wisdom updates. Socrates and the ancient gang studied contentment intensely, but we need a recharge. Happiness, purely defined, is the love of living. Seize moments, set your gypsy blood afire, and discover insights you can’t find online.
Cultural anthropology studies why people do what they do—and asks how society manages itself. A number of academics spend more time studying indoors than out on the world’s streets, which encourages the redefinition of some PhDs as merely Piling it Higher and Deeper. Formal education may be an essential preparation for life, but it’s no substitute for it. Humanity lives “out there,” under the bridges, on remote mountaintops, or sitting beside you. Don’t spend your vital years warming a chair.
We’re here to find and teach love, and I don’t just mean the nude version. The emergence of our individual wisdom tends to loom a few years or decades ahead of us. So I pursued my own, country by country, state by state, person to person, moment by moment. Check out this world before the next.
Bruce Northam
Live Loving
Die Dreaming
—Epitaph in an Ecuadorian cemetery
