October 20, 2013
No rational person can deny that America was blessed with an amazing abundance of natural resources. I believe in God, and so I believe he/she provided the blessings. Even if you don’t believe in God, it doesn’t make America’s natural gifts less real.
Why then aren’t Americans among the happiest people in the world? Perhaps many of us need an attitude adjustment.
While TV channel surfing a couple of weeks ago, I came across a show on CNN featuring a chef, writer and travel journalist named Anthony Bourdain. The show is called “Parts Unknown.” Bourdain previously had a similar show on the Travel Channel.
In his show, Bourdain travels throughout the world meeting locals, exploring and explaining their culture, and sampling their food. Watching several of his shows reminded me of the truly deplorable living conditions of the majority of humans in other nations compared to America.
Bourdain, while sometimes a bit profane, has a unique way of describing each place he visits to allow the viewer to better understand life’s realities for these often impoverished people. What’s interesting is that he doesn’t often pick the places you would expect a famous chef and food critic to visit.
Thanks to the magic of digital video recording (DVR) technology, I have managed to watch shows that featured places such as Ecuador, Kurdistan, Mexico, India, Liberia, Myanmar, Colombia, Morocco, Libya, Peru, the Congo and Jerusalem. In each show, Bourdain tends to focus on the way the locals live and eat — not the wealthy but often the poorest locals.
His shows feature restaurants serving favorite local cuisines, street food vendors and family gatherings. No matter how occasionally bizarre, somehow the food always looks interesting, and I find myself wanting to try most of it.
The poor in most of these places (the majority) live in truly grinding poverty and know they have almost no chance of ever improving their situation. Most were born generationally poor, and most know they and their children will live and die the same way.
Of course, it is this realization that fueled much of the immigration to our nation in the first place. It is what has caused so many of our poorer Southern Hemisphere neighbors to take the long and risky journey to illegally enter the legendary land of milk and honey, America.
What has really amazed me is how often even the very poor people from these places derive much pleasure from just being with friends and family to share a home-cooked meal. No matter how poor people are, and no matter the low quality of food ingredients available, when food is skillfully and lovingly prepared and shared, the resulting pleasure is universally positive.
Observing this happening repeatedly in different countries made me realize just how self-focused and spoiled many Americans, including myself, often are.
Compared to the places shown in many of Bourdain’s shows, the poorest Americans are far better off than the poor in the majority of the world. Yet even the most well-off Americans don’t seem as happy as those truly poor humans.
Too many Americans scurry around living lives at a frenetic pace. Most of us rarely take the time to enjoy being with the people whose company we should most enjoy. Many of us eat too often at fast-food joints where we don’t even enjoy what we are eating.
The old days of families regularly sharing meals is mostly a faded memory. Many of our children think microwaved frozen food is home cooking.
Instead of enjoying face-to-face company with other humans, too many of us seem addicted to electronic devises. My wife and I eat lunch out nearly every day. It is amazing how often we look around a restaurant and see couples and even families sitting throughout a meal staring at their smartphones or tablets instead of communicating with each other.
In every Bourdain show featuring poor people in these other nations, it was rare to see a cellphone or tablet device. In fact, in one show Bourdain’s crew took a helicopter into a remote African bush village. The locals swarmed them with welcoming smiles on their faces, clearly excited to have them as guests. One native fellow in the crowd smiled broadly as he pretended to talk into an old green desktop telephone he was holding, even though you could see it was not plugged into anything.
My wife has resisted owning a smartphone, and I think she’s actually better off. She has encouraged me to at least turn mine off while we are eating. I usually comply because her kicks under the table hurt like the dickens when I can’t resist the urge to sneak a peek at the darn thing.
We Americans need to get down on our knees more often and thank God, or the Big Bang, for our blessings because, compared to most other nations, we are truly privileged to be living in one of the most blessed countries in the world — no matter how the too-greedy and our politicians keep trying to screw it up.
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