There are some things that need to be seen to be believed or understood. For sure such a place is New York. As someone who spent his life in Europe, out of which around 5 years in Russia and the Ukraine, understanding how a city like New York can even function is tough. The amount of people going there and back, the relative small surface of the city, which gives the incredible density, the noise, the trucks. It is truly the city that never sleeps.
It’s hard to describe after seeing it for the first time so I’ll just shamelessly use a comparison I’ve heard which said that New York is like a big maze, you run around blindly without having the need to exit it, the high buildings are like walls and you can only see what’s in front, left or right. It’s the perfect place to disappear in the crowd.
So, if you ask me to describe New York, as I see it, I’ll just say – It’s like a giant maze for people in search of something. It is also amazing. If you never been there and have the chance to see it, DO IT. You might like it, you might not, but you will be impressed in a way or another, trust me on this.
This article is part of a short series about the U.S. through my eyes, a first time visitor.
In the movie Patton, from 1970, there is a scene where the convoy of the whole 3rd Army is held up by a couple of donkeys stuck on a bridge, not wanting to move. Patton gets out of his jeep, takes out his ivory-plated gun and shoots the animals, pushing them in the river. Problem solved. This animal-cruelty story is based on real events.
Later on Patton said that he didn’t like killing the poor beasts but compared to the alternative of his army getting massacred by an air raid, while crossing the bridge, he preferred to do that. Sensible choice, if you think about it. Tough choice, something he didn’t like to do, but he did it, he had to.
We have to shoot our own donkeys every day, we have to take choices we are not necessarily found of but which can save our army. It takes guts and it takes brains to do it.
This story is so powerful because it’s simple – killing a poor creature to save a great number of people. In real life it’s not that simple, is it? Work a couple of hours on a weekend or spend them with your family. Quit your job or linger on. Buy a new car or invest the money. What is the donkey? In every case you have to decide for yourself, but once you find it, shoot the long-eared thing.
This story is also inspired by the book Tuned In, where they speak of the “Shoot the Donkey” series by Expert Access
So making choices is difficult, letting other people tell you who you should be is bad, knowing what you want to do with you life is hard. It seems that we need all the help we can get with decision making. And what better way to do it than to listen to advices?
When you read books by people who think they’re smart and talk to people that believe they poses wisdom which is beyond your current state of development (a fancy way of saying they think they are better than you) and here I think mostly of teachers, who are responsible for so much of the brain washing that goes on in the early years of our life, you’ll get a lot of advices. Tons. Which ones are good, which are bad? Which are status-quo defending things that only beat you into submission and which are pieces of common wisdom or genuinely insightful thoughts we should pay attention to?
The sad part is that you have no way of telling, the good think is that there is a trick to dealing with this. The trick is to listen. Listen before you do, watch and learn, just long enough to make your own decisions. Maybe these are influenced by others, most of the time they are, but they are your own, you’ve thought about them.
Suddenly a piece of advice somebody gave you will become your decision, not his advice. Even if you choose to do exactly what that someone recommended you, it’s still your decision, your making. This has a downside and an upside. The downside is that, if it goes wrong, the advice doesn’t work and everything goes crushing down and you can’t blame it on the one who gave you the advice. The upside is that you can’t blame it on anybody else but you.
“What? Did he just said the same thing twice?”, you might ask. Yes I did. The easiest way is to blame bad decisions on somebody else. Sometimes people who give advice are plain incompetent, and have no interest to put too much thought in what they say. Sometimes they are well intentioned and wise and put in the thinking time into it but they can’t see it from your point of view or have different values (think of your parents) and all of the times, they are not you. Advices have to be filtered through your brain, your values,.untill they become your decision, not commands from somebody else. You can’t blame it on others.
Another thing you must learn is to take the risk. It sucks, it’s uncomfortable, failing sucks big time, there is no one but you to blame, but it’s the only way to take a decision. In the long run in pays of in confidence and experience. Learning to filter what everybody else is telling you that you should do and making you own decisions is the first step in doing. Doing is the first step in succeeding or failing.
So if you want my advice: “First listen, than do”.
I leave you with a song mildly related to this post.
Another question that has terrorized my childhood. Right up there with “What do you want to be when you grow up”. You see, I didn’t have a role model, I still don’t and at some point I worried there was something wrong with me for not having one. I don’t know about you, my dear reader, but I can distinctly remember one of my teacher telling the class that we should have a role model.
Thinking back it’s stupid, of course. The whole idea of having a role model is stupid. What the heck is a role model anyway? According to the source of all digital knowledge – Wikipedia, role model is a "person who serves as an example, whose behavior is emulated by others".
Emulated? Like in trying to be somebody else? Like in being somebody you are not? Like in not feeling ok in your own skin? Well that just sounds wrong. That also is against everything I’ve learned so far in life, that it’s good to be yourself, to follow your dreams, to stand for what you believe.
Main words here: yourself, your, and you.
What my teacher (I believe that was in 8th grade) horribly missed is that there is nothing wrong in aspiring to be great, as some people are, and to be inspired by great people but it’s completely wrong to try to be like that person.
If you like Einstein, don’t try to prove that E=mc^2 is wrong and that it should be E=mc^3, try to do what he has done, and do it your way, revolutionize the way people see the universe. And you don’t have to grow the crazy hair either.
And if Superman is your role model, good luck with stopping bullets with your bare chest, If you want to be like Superman, just look at what the whole idea of Superman is- doing good, stopping bad guys. Who’s stopping you to do good, your way? Nobody! And you don’t even have to have x-ray vision to do that.
The whole role model philosophy is flawed in many ways and it’s one of the teachings of school and society that manages to put a big nail in the coffin of feeling good about who you are and, ultimately, of being happy. If I learned something over the years is that there is one way of doing things right and that way is your way.
I will end with an note of caution – if you feel like hitting somebody on the head with a lead pipe, please don’t do it, even if that is your way of showing sympathy. Working in the boundaries oh right and wrong is a must. Knowing when and where to push and shift those boundaries is an art that makes the artist who wields it one those people that are labeled as role models.
P.S. The previous two post had some clips that were supporting, in one way or the other, my arguments. This post, however, has none, because the ideas in this one are based on believes formed over the years. However, if what I said makes some sense to you, I do recommend reading two books by a person who I greatly admire and who has been an inspiration more than ones, Seth Godin. The first one is called Tribes, and it’s about learning how to become a leader and how communities grow, and the second one is Linchpin and it’s about being yourself in what you do, or so I see it.
Alright, so making decisions is hard, ignorance is bliss and thinking too much and having too much choices makes it even harder to decide.
The question, and real art is how to decide. To take a decision you must know what you want, what is your goal. Without a goal whatever you choose is pointless. A decision in itself must bring you closer to a goal.
Above: Unrelated photo of sunset taken out of my window in Arnhem
Therefore the art is to find out what you truly want or convince yourself that you want something, to set your goals. This is, probably, the most difficult thing you will ever do in you life. For me it still is. And I haven’t gotten there and I will probably never find an answer.
But it all gravitates around the question – why are we here, what is the purpose of life and what makes us happy.
Humans are mammals, animals, therefore the need to reproduce and find a partner cannot be taken out the picture but we have to go beyond that and figure out what else is there to life? What can we do to be happy?
Well, it turns out that happiness has two sides:
being happy in you life (the present)
being happy with you life (the past)
We might be happy now but we might be unhappy with how we lived our life.
I’m not smart enough to figure this out all by myself so watch this talk by Daniel Kahneman. Make sure to watch the very end too (around minute 18), when he talks about money and happiness.
So we need to figure out a way to be happy with our present and to fill in our brains with enough pleasant memories to feel good about our life. Family and friends are both present and past, they bring both strong experiences and enjoyable moments. Work, on the other hand, is what our present is mostly filled with. And new things we try and do might not be the most interesting or enjoyable thing in the present but these make a big part of our memories.
working with these three things will fix the following:
We are social animals and we need to love and to be loved, so learning to enjoy spending time with you parents, brothers, friends, parents is very important. Even if you don’t see eye to eye you must find a way to enjoy being around people you care about and who care about you
Work takes up most of our time. If we hate what we are doing, something is wrong. We either are not doing what we are supposed to do or we fail to set our expectations and experiences to such a level that we will actually enjoy ourselves at what we are doing. Seth Godin make some very good points of how important is to emotionally invest in your work, but not in the way of going mad and yelling at your boss or coworkers, but in the way of relating to your coworkers and learning how to enjoy being around them. I recommend Seth’s book Linchpin, Read it, it’s worth doing it.
When I’m in doubt about doing something or not I guide myself by the principle “better sorry about doing something than being sorry you never did it”. It is very difficult to get yourself moving, you are tired, it’s never the right time, it might be raining, but if you have to choose between sitting on the couch and experiencing something new never, ever choose the sitting on the couch.
In short these are the 3 things I believe that mix together into the magic thing that is the purpose of life. We have to reproduce, because we are mammals and our instincts tell us that we have to do with and we are rewarded with having to grow those extraordinary little things called babies. We must love our loved ones. We must learn to know how to make out of work an enjoyable challenge, not a job and we must learn how to never say no to new challenges.
In my next posts I will focus on the last two points, on how we can figure out what to do and how I approach new challenges and opportunities that come along the way.
I challenge you to tell me where you think I’m wrong, to tell me what is your secret mix that gives you the purpose of life, to rant, to cheer and to read on!
Before I end this post here are a few TED talks about happiness which are more than interesting and a real food for thought. They will make you think about what experiences make you happy and not and how too many options can make you unhappy.
Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy?
A question that has tortured my childhood. Still have nightmares about it and is up there, in my top 5 of “stupidest question you can ask a human being”.
Why, you might ask. Simple, because the answer implies one of the following:
the kid being interrogated has no idea what to say and therefore answers with what she notices that amuses the grown-ups;
the kid has been brainwashed into thinking she wants to be something the grown-ups have told her she should be;
the kid clangs to some fantasy in which her heroes take part aka “I want to be an astronaut”.
Only the last one is, in my humble opinion, a valid answer, but really, how can you expect a 5 year old to be able to tell you what the heck she will be doing in 15 or so years when even the task of tying the shoe laces seems insurmountable? And why should kids even bother with such thoughts?
But this is not about kids and this is not about what you want to do when you grow up, this, my friends, this is about the art of making up your mind, taking a decision, pursuing it and, at the very end, being happy.
My modest brain came to the conclusion, by ways of analysis of empirical data, that there is a direct link between knowing what you want and happiness.
The trick is the knowing what you want part. Some of the most interesting people I have had the honor of meeting in my short and so far not very useful existence are plagued by thoughts in the lines of ‘what is life’, ‘what is the purpose of life’ and so on. A polite way of saying they have no damn clue what they want from life, most of the times. I say most of the times because it’s clear you want your children to be happy, your family to be healthy. But when it comes to their own selves and their own decisions, this incredible people have no clue.
Many times it pays to look at what others think about a subject, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, and therefore, my dear reader, let’s look at what the wise people from our past have said about the matter and at what’s been distilled down into bits of wisdom known as sayings. So, time for some cheesy quotes.
You got Socrates saying “I know that I know nothing”, There is the saying “The more you learn the more you realize how little you know”. And there is the “The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why bother to learn” by George Bernard Shaw. And my two favorites “Ignorance is bliss” and the Romanian version “Fericit cel s?rac cu duhul”.
Alright, cheesy quotes aside you can’t dismiss the fact that some of the happiest people I’ve seen live in complete brain-washed dumbness, complaisant of their own stupid condition. Ignorance is truly bliss.
However, considering that banging your head against the wall to shave off some vital IQ points is not an option for you, than what is there to do when in doubt and when you have to decide taking option A or B?
Well, I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you what are my thoughts about the subject. This post is an introduction in a series of 7 posts about decision making and the related happiness that will do just that. It’s a subject that fascinates me, I believe it is very important, as knowing how to make decisions should help you be more satisfied with yourself and it’s such a interesting subject that I can’t help but be fascinated by it.
Before finishing this first post let me give you some food for thought. Watch this fascinating TED talk by Barry Schwartz called “The paradox of choice”.
This is basically a scientific proof of “ignorance is bliss”. Enjoy and read on!
P.S. This series of posts is dedicated to a very special friend
So, a week has come and passed and every day I’ve written about a small part of what I’ve seen during my months in Holland, the land of the crazy Dutch, but what I’ve written is just a spec of dust in a sand storm of impressions gained in this strange and yet wonderful country with depressing weather and crazy inhabitants.
I feel that it is fitting to end the week of crazy Dutch stories with a few of the stories I’ve considered writing but which didn’t made it in this weeks stories. In no particular order I’ll just mention facts, impressions and thoughts.
The crazy Dutch have something against wearing hats… Only when the weather is so cold that you get frost bites on your brain they would think about covering their heads with something. It’s true, it’s strange, it’s Dutch.
The girls wear boots a lot. Yup, don’t know if it’s just a passing fashion thing or it has always been so, but if you walk around you will see a lot of girls wearing boots. It’s true, it’s not that strange but it’s still Dutch.
There are a lot of people that do sports on regular basis, all kind of sports. Being a person that likes sports and considering that in Romania the biggest sport is football and it’s practiced by sitting on the couch and drinking beer this seems as a breath of fresh air. It’s true, it’s the way it should be and it’s Dutch.
Above – Crazy Dutch goat at the Open Air Museum in Arnhem.
There are a lot of petting farms for kids, so the kids can see that milk does not come from a factory, produced, like soda, but from a cow. It’s true, it’s good and it’s Dutch.
Above – Windmill at the Open Air Museum in Arnhem used by the crazy Dutch for pumping water
There seems to be an obsession with how to build dams and use pumps to control the flow of water. Well, for a country with so much land below the sea level it’s not that unexpected, but it’s still strange when you see how this obsession manifests itself. I’ve see in at lest two museums (The Water Museum in Arnhem and NEMO in Amsterdam) a sort of a water slide you could build dams on. I also saw at the Open air Museum in Arnhem a sort of a crane toy in the middle of a puddle with which children could build dams. It’s true, it’s strange and it’s Dutch.
There also seems to be some obsession with swimming. Kids have to pass some swimming tests where they show they know they can swim and that they can also swim with their clothes on and in difficult conditions. It also has to do with the country being under the sea level. It’s true, it’s cute, it’s useful and it’s Dutch.
When you go to a cinema you might be amazed that instead of pop corn and soda people drink beer and eat… beer. I was taken by surprise. As far as I understood going to the cinema is considered the same as meeting your friends in the city, which seems right, therefore it’s like going to the pub, so having a beer is normal. Also, some cinemas have a pause right in the middle of the movie, like at the theater. It probably has something to do with unloading all that beer . It’s true, it’s weird, it has some logic to it, it’s Dutch.
The beer doesn’t come in the half a litter bottles but in 0.33ml bottles, which, sometimes, makes more sense, if you drink all night. It’s true, it’s different and it’s Dutch.
And I probably can go on like this for a few more pages (actually I ran out of good ideas but there are some other things which I might remember).
Now is the time to write a conclusion… And what comes to mind, my dear reader, is that I’ve been surprised by how friendly the Dutch are, I’ve been amazed by how things seem to just work in Holland, and I’ve been amazed by how many interesting things such a small country manages to hide. I feel that the whole Dutch experience was, is and will be a privilege and I’m very happy to have had the opportunity to meet and get to know a little bit how the crazy Dutch are and I’m very happy to be able to call some of the craziest Dutch I’ve met, my friends.
And thus, my dear reader, I choose to end the week of crazy Dutch stories, hope you enjoyed it, hope to hear from you and hope you will read on!
I couldn’t write about the Dutch, my dear reader, and not write about their food. Mainly because food is such an important part of our lives and partly because I like to eat and am not indifferent to what I eat and also because the crazy Dutch have a crazy relation with their food.
First let’s start this culinary introspection by going to the very stereotypes I ranted about in my first post. Stay with me, this has a purpose. What food comes to mind when you think about Italy? For me it’s pasta, fish and wine. France? All kind of fancy and useless dishes. America? A big, greasy, unhealthy burger. Holland??? Four months ago – nothing, maybe the cheese, but that’s not a real dish. Today the first thing that comes to mind – fries with mayonnaise . Yup, that’s the strongest association. The crazy Dutch love their friets mayo.
Above – a place where you can buy all things fried, right in the center of the town at the market.
But wait, there’s more, there seems to be a real love for deep fried things. from all kind of fish nuggets to the very typical croquette, bitterbal and of course frikandel. All deep fried and server with either bread or the all present fries. Unhealthy as it is these are, the crazy Dutch know how to make these heart-stoppers very well. I mean, a croquette might be like a heart attack in a bun but it still tastes good…
Supposedly, there is such a thing as traditional Dutch food like stampott or hutspot, which is a sort of a mash potato, onions and carrots combination, but I yet have to see it eaten on a large scale.
Therefore, with all regret, I must say that Holland doesn’t have the greatest culinary tradition. And there is more! There is something I can’t put my finger on, dear reader, about how the crazy Dutch consume their food. There are many nice restaurants, many fancy places with very good food but, in the same time, people don’t seem to care that much about food, on a daily basis. Eating some “bread” (which is a way of saying a sandwich with some cheese and maybe some other stuff on it) is the most common thing I’ve seen. And people seem to think that what I cook is strange, Which either means that I’m a really bad cook or that when it comes to food most of the crazy Dutch are not so eager to try new things. And there seems to be something about noodle soup… Don’t know what but the crazy Dutch seem to love that stuff… Wonder if there is some secret organization which identifies itself by eating noodle soup… must investigate.
OK, back to the subject. So, what you, my dear reader, learned so far. The crazy Dutch love all things fried, especially fries and especially with mayo. There are some traditional dishes but you have to look for them. They eat a lot of sandwiches and most of them don’t really like new food. And there is something about noodle soup…
But what about the famous cheese? It’s good, that’s what’s about it. And there is a lot of it and as far as I can tell you can divide it into 2 categories – new and old cheese. And I’ve also see green cheese, which is not only edible but also good. But there is a catch. You see, in Romania you have the 2 basic types of dairy products – cheese (brânz?) and… cheese (ca?caval). Brânz? differs from ca?caval in the way it’s made. Anyway, long story short, brânz? is usually white and can be very fresh (a few weeks) and you can’t find it in Holland. The closest thing I’ve found is the feta cheese but that’s not quite it.
Anyway, in Holland you have the second type of cheese, and a lot of it, and did I mentioned that it was good? These crazy Dutch really know how to make their cheese, that’s for sure.
Above – The last moments of a piece of herring, if eaten traditionally. the white stuff is pieces of onions.
Last but not least there is one more thing… the herring. That’s basically, a raw piece of slime fish you eat with chopped onion, and, if you can, by holding it by its tail, throwing your head back and biting that thing with fury. Well, I don’t do it that way. Because the fish is good but incredibly slimy and fatty. What I do is I take it, put it on a plate, slice it up in bite-sized pieces, put a ton of onions on it, some lemon and than enjoy. And that fish is probably the only healthy thing from the crazy Dutch diet and it only seems fittingly that it’s a slimy fish .
Oh boy, these crazy Dutch and their food. For me a vey Important part of what has defined my experience in Holland.
So, my dear reader, the crazy Dutch stories are almost over, a week has come and gone, there is only one more day. Read on! And be amazed!
The Dutch pride themselves as being a very open culture and, my dear reader, they are. And it’s not too hard to see that this is so. The only thing you need to do is take a walk down a street with houses and you’ll be amazed by how many of them have no curtains.
Above – unrelated photo of a crazy Dutch bird. I mean, common, I couldn’t go that far as making pictures of people eating dinner inside their homes, right?
You might ask, no curtains, so what? Well, paired with the fact that the windows are, in many cases, just a tiny little bit smaller than the whole wall and that you can see from one side of the house to the other, than you could ask yourself what’s wrong with these crazy Dutch, don’t they know the meaning of the word privacy? I mean, really, whenever I come home I can see what my neighbor is watching on TV. And I’m not even interested in seeing what he’s watching. I bet I could tell what mail he got if i fancied to do so.
But you know what? You get used to it. My apartment, although lacks the huge windows, still offers a remarkable view on the office building next door and vice-versa, I would expect. Every morning when going into the kitchen felt strange knowing that, potentially, somebody could look at me making breakfast. And of course I could see perfectly people sipping coffee and reading their e-mails.
Guess what? I stopped giving a damn. And guess what else? Nobody gives a damn. Probably the only people that walk down the street and look in other peoples homes are those who are not used to it. Yup, the crazy Dutch have some crazy homes…
Above – some crazy narrow Dutch houses in Amsterdam
And talking about houses I already wrote about the magnificent stairs they have. And you have to keep in mind that a lot of homes are so small or narrow that would make a claustrophobic person go crazy by just looking at them.
Yup, the crazy Dutch have some crazy homes…
But you know what? After some time they start to feel just right. The big curtenless windows make sense, since there is so little sunlight, the narrow staircases don’t seem so weird anymore and the narrow houses seem in the right place. And what can you do? It’s just the way the crazy Dutch like them…
Posted on February 11, 2010 by Liviu in Green, Life
There is one thing you can’t miss, if you ever come to Holland, and that thing or things, better said, are bicycles. There are bikes everywhere, on every street corner, before every pub and especially in front of every train station.
Above – the biggest bicycle parking in Holland, in Amsterdam, Look at the platforms on the right of the picture – those are all bicycles,
Yes, my dear reader, the crazy Dutch people and bikes go together like peanut butter and jelly. For me it’s impossible to think about Holland and not to think about bicycles. It’s such a specific and wonderful thing. I, for one, would kill a few people (I have a list somewhere) to see the same thing in Bucharest, it just makes sense.
Above – My banged-up Gazelle bike in the Veluwe national park
Therefore meet my not-in-such-a-good-shape-but-still-wonderful-typical-Dutch bike with the help of which I have travelled many roads, mostly to work and back, that is. I love this bike, mostly because the wheals still turn. And I love the bike lanes the crazy Dutch have put everywhere and I love that you can ride you bike everywhere. I love bikes.
Above – Check the wooden baskets on the bike, there is a young crazy Dutch inside. Picture taken last year in Amsterdam
And the Dutch love their bikes too. And you can see some weird contraptions which, for some reason, are still called bicycles. Bikes with big wooden baskets for carrying the young members of the family, bikes with smaller baskets for carrying groceries, other stuff and occasionally a dog or two (I’ve seen a dog in a bicycle basket with my own two eyes), bikes with some sort of a second, smaller bicycle attached to them, bikes with some sort of a one-wheeled trailer, tandem bikes, bikes with a small gas engine, bikes with an eclectic engine, big bikes, small bikes, all kind of bikes, there is something for everybody.
There is one thing you should keep on mind when thinking about Holland – it rains, a lot, I mean like a lot. Or, let me put it this way. When I see the sun for me it’s almost a party. It’s that bad. Therefore the crazy Dutch had to develop some crazy way to ride their bikes when it rains, or, with other words, daily. I’ve noticed 3 approaches to this:
The “Umbrella” method: keep one hand on the handle and with the other balance the umbrella and pray the wind doesn’t blow too hard. My least favorite method due to it’s inefficiency as it’s uncomfortable and usually the wind blows, so you get wet anyway but you also punish yourself with a grueling balancing act
The method called “Don’t care and just let the rain do it’s job, after all, a little water never killed nobody, right?”. Wrong! People who say this (Simon) probably forgot about a little thing called pneumonia – which involves getting very sick and becoming very familiar with your own bodily fluids. And you wouldn’t believe how many people use this method. Sure, it’s convenient, but it still sucks to get wet all the way to your underpants and a little further.
The “Rain pants” method: make use of a rain coat plus the fabulous invention of rain paints. This is my favorite method and I gladly use it. To use it you have to put any drop of pride you might have away and dress to something that resembles a clown with baggy pants or some sort of lost poncho-wearing Mexican on a bike. But it works!
I can go on for hours and hours about the Dutch and their bikes, it’s such a Dutch thing and I love it so much. Therefore tomorrow I’ll hop on my very Dutch and somewhat shaky Gazelle bike and hit the road and while pedaling up and down I’ll be watching those crazy Dutch. Read on.
P.S. Unrelated to the Dutch but related to bicycles I included a clip about driver awareness when it comes to cyclists.
