What a poor Mexican fisherman taught me about time and happiness

One of the biggest benefits of traveling, or better yet, of living in a different country, is being able to see how others live their lives and compare it to how we live ours. If we are open to it, we can gain perspective and understanding, not just of the human condition in general, but more directly of our own condition.

I will give you an example.

During a road trip through Mexico for almost a year, I repeatedly noticed that, especially in the poorer towns, virtually every Mexican I saw interacting with one another seemed happy. There was, as the French call it, a joy of life, or “joy to live”, and a light attitude. Now that I have settled here in Mexico to run The best moving companies in MexicoWhen our team unloads our customers’ household goods, I almost always see a lot of banter and energetic cooperation between team members. A customer even pointed this out to me, using another French phrase, spirit of the bodyor energetic cooperation.

I have noticed that compared to the US, workers/workers everywhere here in Mexico joke around and joke around a lot. Walking past a construction site, it’s not unusual to hear several of the workers singing (loudly) along with the radio. You’ll see this spirit in many places, whether it’s meeting Mexicans here in their little shops or walking their children to school. They seem to be genuinely content and socially connected. Not the fake, shallow “how are you / I really don’t care” kind of social connection type, but the “genuinely happy, joking with each other, greeting each other warmly like the other person matters” kind of social connected. In

On some level this even extends to complete strangers, eg me. When I walk through a town where no one knows me, I almost always receive acknowledgments, warm smiles, and several examples of “good morning” or “good afternoon.”

But from my typical North of the Border perspective, this made no sense. From how he was used to seeing it, these people lived in tiny houses and had very few material goods. So wouldn’t it naturally follow that their relative material poverty would make them relatively miserable? Poor = unhappy, right?

But what I was seeing with my own eyes told me otherwise.

The situation was so different from what I expected that I couldn’t help but compare what I saw in these areas of Mexico to what I saw when I was in much wealthier large first world cities like New York City, Chicago, or Tokyo. In such places, I usually see people with tense expressions on their faces, most likely too busy and late, rushing from one place to another, apparently not very happy and certainly not very relaxed. When they met on the street, their concern was not to say “hello” and spend some time asking about each other’s relatives, but to find a way to get past the other person and to do it as quickly as possible. The other person was seen more as an obstacle than a human being.

Could any of this be because I was spending a lot of time in Mexico in my older years?

rural, more traditional areas? Maybe, but that didn’t explain everything. There was a general cultural difference as well.

Comparing attitudes from what I saw in Mexico to what I saw in the US reminded me of the Spanish word people south of the US border use for “worry”, which is “to worry,” and which seems to me to come from the root of “being worried”. In our pursuit of material goods in the developed world, most pronounced in the largest cities, have we exchanged a part of our free time and, with it, some of our humanity, in exchange for the more “nose to grindstone” activity of acquiring material goods? “Of course we have. But in the deal, have we become more worried/worried/unhappy? And what is the point of working for all these material goods, anyway? Isn’t the goal of acquiring more material goods to be happier?

An economist might argue that the people in these smaller, poorer villages were “taking advantage” of the gains made by those First World folk preoccupied with their more hasty, self-important lives and grim determination, which is true. People who don’t work as seriously, and instead enjoy each other’s company more happily, aren’t developing cures for illnesses, or even thinking about

how to have clean water and enough food to eat, etc., without which no one would be very happy. And you, too, may personally feel less happy when your cheerful, easygoing, singing plumber shows up two hours late to fix his drain because he got distracted talking to a friend. So there are tradeoffs. We just have to understand where the tradeoffs are and then know where to make these tradeoffs.

Here’s what I see as the tradeoff: time not focused on making money (what I’ll call “free time”) versus material success. For conceptual clarity, we can view it as a continuum, with more free time at one end of the continuum and more material success at the other. The more free time you have, other things being equal, the less material goods you will acquire. The more material goods you acquire, the more free time you have to lose to acquire them.

We don’t think much on this continuum unless, as a result of being in another country or place, you see people in a significantly different place on the continuum.

where are you. For me, this has been one of the benefits of living in Mexico. As I was looking at these people who chose a different place on this continuum than my friends and I north of the border, it made sense to ask myself, “Where is the best place on this continuum for me?”

Wouldn’t it make sense for you to ask yourself where is the best place on this continuum for you as well?

All of this reminds me of a parable that was told to me over 30 years ago. (I tend to remember this sort of thing and then apply it when it’s most appropriate.)

The story begins with an investment banker on vacation in Mexico who, after taking his ulcer medication, gorging himself on a rushed breakfast he did not enjoy, and making several tense phone calls to the office very early in the morning, on the advice of his doctor. , uncharacteristically took a walk on the beach from his $600-a-night hotel room. There, he comes across a poor Mexican fishing village where he notices one particular fisherman who had arrived hours before everyone else but had three times as many fish and was leaving his boat to go home. Being inquisitive by nature, the investment banker stopped the fisherman and asked how he had caught so many more fish than the other fishermen.

“I have a secret technique, sir, that I use to catch a lot of fish easily.”

The investment banker was intrigued, but also perplexed. “Okay. So if you can catch that many more fish so easily, why don’t you head back out for a second or third run? Then you could bring in even more.”

“I’d rather go home early.”

Taking a second to digest the response he had just heard, even more confused and a bit incredulous, the investment banker asked, almost yelling, “Well, what the hell do you do when you get home early?”

Finding the investment banker a bit unpleasant and intense, but still wanting to be polite, the fisherman very calmly replied, “I can be with my kids. Later, after a big lunch with my family, I take a nap and have enough time to walk on the beach with my wife. If I made multiple trips back to fish, I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

The investment banker was horrified and a little horrified that the fisherman left so much potential profit on the table. Composing himself, as if he were talking to a child who just didn’t “get it,” he said, “Listen. This is what we will do. You tell me the technique. I will hire a group of high-level intellectual property lawyers to obtain a patent with the exclusive rights. If someone infringes our patent, we’ll sue them! Then I’m going to New York to raise some investment capital, we’ll buy a fleet of boats, train crews, set up worldwide distribution, go public and retire a fortune!

“How long would this take and now how long would it take to work?”

“I guess it would take five or six years and you would work seven days a week, 12 hours

per day. But after that, you will be rich!”

“And after being rich, what would you do then, sir?”

“Well, with all that money, you’d get home early and be with your kids. Later, after a big lunch together with your family, you can take a nap and have enough time to walk on the beach with your wife. “

Now that I’ve seen this in person (and I’m getting older), this story means so much more to me.