Friday, February 20, 2009

Geography

I recently thumbed through a book called The Geography a Bliss: one Grump’s Attempt to Find the Happiest Place on Earth. In it the author endeavors to find which countries of the world are happiest and why. I am particularly fond of Bhutan’s quest for happiness through its policy for Gross National Happiness (GNH). Created by Bhutan’s king in the 70s and summarized by one of its ministers, the ideology “connects Bhutan’s development goals with the pursuit of happiness”. This policy has amounted to a fairly sequestered life for Bhutan's 700,000 citizens, who only recently began to face the envitable impact of the global marketplace and technological advancement. The fear of some in Bhutan seems valid; how does one maintain priority for quality of life over the material priority for productivity and wealth?Let’s hope Bhutan retains cultural vitality when foreigners and competiting priorities entrude.

If geography includes both the physical features of a place as well as the human-made contours such as borders, cultures, and attitudes, I wonder if one or the other more fixed? While terrain and weather and vegetation shape our day-to-day existence and our national productivity, in many ways our lives are realized in the midst the slightly less physical phenomena of people adapting to their surroundings. Everything from the language we use to describe life to the way we cut our hair emerges from our ties to a place.

I’ve been reflecting on my internal geography. As I think about departures from life as I know it, I’m led to feelings of sadness and loss even as I know there are exciting unknowns ahead. Because I can’t imagine fully the day-to-day life I will live in a new physical place, I turn to what I do know, myself (in part), my relationships, my story, my worldview. These things come with me in the next chapter. I have to think that while a place will shape and change me, I retain much of who I am as I interact with and engage in another culture.