Glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for your blog.

Awesome!

I can’t stand when people complain about the poverty and begging while visiting Mexico, and that it ‘ruins’ their vacation… ugh.

I have a similar story to you experiencing this community being happy… I lived in New Orleans for several months during the 5 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My friends and co-workers told me how when they were without electricity, they would all gather together in the evenings and light fires, grill food and talk until late at night. Neighboring communities took in refugees and shared any limited resources. They said that they were so much happier during those times, but when everything got fixed up, they all went back to their houses, locked doors and TVs. Sad.

Now, granted, these were people who could afford life’s little luxuries. These weren’t the people who lost their homes with no insurance, and were stuck in the refugee camps with a lack of necessities.

As an aside… I went skydiving, and I had a smile plastered to my face for at least a week.

When I kids are a little older, definitely plan on them seeing true world poverty as a basis to give them a realization of how other parts of the world live.

It never fails to impress me that the simple life is the happy one. More money, more stuff, more problems. I just read today in the WSJ about the brilliant, accomplished multi-decamillioaire hedge funder who commit suicide in his mid-50’s after a modest change of fortune.

I wonder if your father-in-law had sensed your sense of discontent and fear and was trying to open your mind a bit, with the sky diving excursion. He probably does not know to this day that the van ride was the mind-bender.

There’s a real disconnect between happiness and wealth, isn’t there? You were wise to pick up on that early in life. I’ll bet your father-in-law spent as much on one adventure in Cabo than some of the appliance box families spend in a year.

Our kids grow up seeing a lot of privilege and not a lot of poverty. We’ve volunteered at the soup kitchen, but would like for them to see true third world poverty to help them appreciate just how good we have it.

Best,
-PoF