Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard? | Jon Jandai | TEDxDoiSuthep

Summary

The speaker, originally from a poor Thai village, shares a profound transformation in perspective from viewing life as hard and complicated in Bangkok to embracing simplicity and self-sufficiency. They recount their disillusionment with conventional success and education, leading to a return to their roots where they discovered the ease of fulfilling basic needs like food, housing, and clothing with minimal effort. The narrative highlights the importance of self-reliance, community, and reevaluating societal norms to achieve a life of true freedom and happiness.

Takeaways

• 😀 Life can be simple and enjoyable, contrary to the common belief that it's inherently hard and complicated.
• 🏙️ The speaker's early life in a Thai village was carefree, but exposure to outside influences led to feelings of inadequacy and the pursuit of 'success' in Bangkok.
• 📚 The pursuit of education and success in Bangkok was challenging, with long hours of work yielding minimal returns and a sense of dissatisfaction.
• 🌾 A return to a simpler life, reminiscent of childhood, provided the speaker with a sense of fulfillment and self-sufficiency through farming and minimal work.
• 🏡 Building a house was achieved with minimal effort and time, highlighting the absurdity of societal expectations that require decades of work for such basic needs.
• 👕 The speaker questioned the need for material possessions, such as fashionable clothes, and opted for a lifestyle of using what is already available.
• 🧘‍♂️ Self-reflection and understanding one's true desires can lead to a life of happiness and contentment, rather than chasing societal standards.
• 🌱 The concept of 'Pun Pun' in Chiang Mai was born from the desire to preserve seeds and promote a lifestyle of simplicity and self-sufficiency.
• 🛍️ Rejecting consumerism and the constant need for new things can lead to a life free from the stress of keeping up with trends and materialistic desires.
• 💊 The speaker learned to rely on natural remedies and self-care for health, rather than solely on modern medical systems.
• 🌐 The current societal model is criticized for making basic needs difficult to obtain, which the speaker views as a sign of an uncivilized era.

Q & A

What was the initial perception of life in the speaker's village before the influence of television and outsiders?

The speaker's initial perception of life in the village was that everything was fun and easy, with a sense of simplicity and contentment.

How did the introduction of television and the arrival of outsiders affect the speaker's view of their life?

The introduction of television and outsiders brought the idea of poverty and the need to chase success, which made the speaker feel bad and poor, prompting a move to Bangkok.

What were the speaker's experiences and feelings when they first moved to Bangkok?

The speaker found life in Bangkok hard and complicated, requiring a lot of studying, working, and living in poor conditions, which led to questioning the purpose of their hard work.

What was the speaker's opinion on the knowledge taught at the university?

The speaker felt that the knowledge at the university was mostly destructive, contributing to environmental degradation and not providing productive knowledge for a better life.

Why did the speaker decide to quit university and return to their village?

The speaker felt that the university education was not fulfilling and that life was becoming too complicated. They wanted to return to a simpler and more fulfilling way of living as they remembered from their childhood.

How did the speaker's lifestyle change after returning to their village?

The speaker adopted a lifestyle of working only two months a year for farming, maintaining a small garden, and living in a self-built house, which provided them with enough food and a comfortable living.

What is the significance of the 'Pun Pun' project initiated by the speaker in Chiang Mai?

The 'Pun Pun' project aims to save seeds and serve as a learning center to teach people how to make life easy, focusing on reconnecting with oneself and others, and promoting self-sufficiency.

What are the four basic needs that the speaker believes must be cheap and easy for everyone according to their understanding of civilization?

The four basic needs the speaker refers to are food, house, clothes, and medicine, which should be accessible and affordable for a civilized society.

How does the speaker view the current state of human civilization in terms of meeting basic needs?

The speaker views the current state as uncivilized, as basic needs have become hard to obtain for many people, leading to a complicated and difficult life.

What personal realization did the speaker have about buying clothes and following fashion?

The speaker realized that buying clothes and following fashion did not change their life or make them feel better. Instead, they chose to use what they had and not follow fashion trends.

How did the speaker approach the issue of healthcare and sickness after leaving the conventional lifestyle?

The speaker began to use natural methods such as water and earth to heal themselves, learning basic knowledge to rely on their own abilities for healthcare.

Outlines

00:00

😔 From Hardship to Simplicity

The speaker, Jelena Vukovic, reflects on their life journey from a poor Thai village to the bustling city of Bangkok, where they initially felt life was hard and complicated. They recount their struggle with the societal pressure to chase success and the disillusionment with the destructive knowledge taught in university. The speaker's realization of the simplicity of life back in their village, where people had ample free time and engaged in meaningful activities, led them to question the modern way of life. They decided to leave the city and return to a simpler, more fulfilling lifestyle.

05:01

🌱 Embracing a Self-Sufficient Life

In this paragraph, the speaker describes their transition to a self-sufficient lifestyle after leaving university and Bangkok. They adopted a life of farming, growing rice, and maintaining a small garden, which provided them with more than enough food for their family and surplus to sell. The speaker also shares their experience with building houses using simple, natural materials and how they managed to create multiple homes with minimal effort compared to conventional methods. They emphasize the ease of living a life that is not dictated by consumerism or societal expectations, and the freedom that comes from not following fashion trends and relying on second-hand clothing.

10:04

🌟 Rediscovering Life's Essentials and Inner Freedom

The speaker continues their narrative by discussing the realization that life's basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, and medicine—should be accessible and affordable for everyone. They share their experiences with natural healing methods and the importance of self-reliance in maintaining health. The speaker also talks about the freedom they feel from not conforming to societal norms and the simplicity of life when one is not bound by materialistic desires. They founded 'Pun Pun' in Chiang Mai as a seed-saving initiative and learning center to promote a simple and easy way of life, emphasizing the need for reconnection with oneself and others for true happiness. The speaker concludes by challenging the modern notion of civilization, which they believe has made life unnecessarily hard, and encourages the audience to consider a return to a more natural and uncomplicated way of living.

Keywords

💡Life is easy

This phrase encapsulates the speaker's core message that life can be simple and fulfilling if we don't complicate it unnecessarily. The speaker contrasts his life in Bangkok, which was difficult and stressful, with his life in the countryside, where he found contentment and ease by focusing on basic needs. This concept challenges societal norms that equate success with hard work and material wealth.

💡Bangkok

Bangkok represents the pursuit of success and the challenges that come with urban life. The speaker describes his experience in Bangkok as a period of hardship, where despite working hard, he struggled to meet basic needs. This city symbolizes the complexity and difficulties that arise from chasing societal definitions of success, contrasting with the simplicity he found in rural life.

💡Success

Success is portrayed as a societal construct that drives people to work hard, often at the expense of their well-being. The speaker critiques the traditional notion of success, which he pursued in Bangkok, only to find it unfulfilling. He redefines success as being able to meet basic needs with ease, which he achieves through simple living in his village.

💡University

University symbolizes formal education and the knowledge systems that the speaker finds destructive and disconnected from practical, productive living. He critiques university education for being boring and leading to careers that harm the environment, suggesting that this kind of learning complicates life rather than making it easier.

💡Seed saving

Seed saving is central to the speaker's philosophy and represents self-reliance, food security, and freedom. By saving seeds, the speaker emphasizes the importance of maintaining control over one's food supply and, by extension, one's life. It reflects his broader message of returning to simpler, more sustainable practices.

💡Pun Pun

Pun Pun is the community and learning center the speaker helped establish in Chiang Mai. It serves as a place to preserve seeds and promote sustainable living practices. Pun Pun embodies the speaker's vision of a life that is easy and self-sufficient, contrasting with the complex and stressful life in the city.

💡Clothing

Clothing is used by the speaker to illustrate the unnecessary complexity and wastefulness of modern consumer culture. He discusses how he stopped buying new clothes, relying instead on what others left behind. This decision represents his rejection of fashion and materialism in favor of simplicity and resourcefulness.

💡Medicine

Medicine, in the speaker's context, refers to natural and self-sufficient healing practices. He emphasizes the importance of understanding and correcting one's lifestyle to maintain health, rather than relying on expensive, external medical solutions. This concept ties into his broader philosophy of living in harmony with nature and being self-reliant.

💡Civilization

Civilization, according to the speaker, should be defined by the ease with which people can access basic needs like food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. He argues that the current state of civilization, where these necessities are difficult for many to obtain, is actually uncivilized. His view challenges conventional ideas of progress and development.

💡Normal

The concept of 'normal' is redefined by the speaker as living a simple, self-sufficient life, which he contrasts with the complicated, stressful lives that are often considered normal in modern society. He suggests that what is commonly seen as normal is actually abnormal and detrimental to well-being, advocating instead for a return to a more natural and balanced way of living.

Highlights

The speaker emphasizes that life can be easy and fun, contrary to common belief.

Growing up in a poor Thai village, the arrival of TV and outsiders brought awareness of poverty and the idea of chasing success in Bangkok.

The speaker's experience in Bangkok was hard, with long work hours and poor living conditions, raising questions about the link between hard work and success.

University education was found to be boring and filled with destructive knowledge rather than productive skills.

The speaker criticizes professions like architecture and engineering for contributing to environmental destruction.

Agriculture education is viewed as learning to poison the land and water, furthering destruction.

The speaker felt life was complicated and disappointing, leading to a reevaluation of their time in Bangkok.

A comparison is drawn between the simple, abundant life of childhood and the complex, time-starved modern lifestyle.

The importance of having free time to understand oneself and pursue happiness is highlighted.

The speaker contrasts the modern consumption-driven lifestyle with traditional values of craftsmanship and simplicity.

A decision to quit university and return to a simpler life, embracing traditional ways of living and working, is described.

The speaker details how a minimalist lifestyle with basic needs met easily can lead to a surplus and financial stability.

Building a house with simple methods and minimal time investment is presented as an achievable goal for everyone.

The speaker's realization that material possessions like clothing do not define self-worth or happiness led to a change in consumption habits.

The concept of using natural remedies for healing instead of relying solely on modern medicine is introduced.

The founding of 'Pun Pun' in Chiang Mai as a seed-saving and learning center to promote easy living is explained.

The speaker argues that modern society has become uncivilized by making basic needs difficult to obtain.

A call to return to normalcy and simplicity, rather than the abnormal complexity of modern life, is made.

The speaker shares their personal transformation from a life of hardship to one of ease and lightness, despite being seen as abnormal by others.

The importance of managing one's own mind and making choices for an easy or hard life is concluded as being in the individual's hands.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Jelena Vukovic Reviewer: Ivana Korom

There is one phrase that I have always wanted

to say to everyone in my life.

That phrase is "Life is easy."

It's so easy and fun.

I never thought like that before.

When I was in Bangkok, I felt like life is very hard, very complicated.

I was born in a poor village on the Northeastern of Thailand

And when I was a kid, everything was fun and easy,

but when the TV came, many people came to the village,

they said,

"You are poor, you need to chase success in your life.

You need to go to Bangkok to pursue success in your life."

So I felt bad, I felt poor.

So I needed to go to Bangkok.

When I went to Bangkok, it was not very fun.

You need to learn, study a lot and work very hard,

and then you can get success.

I worked very hard, eight hours per day at least,

but all I could eat was just a bowl of noodles per meal,

or some Tama dish of fried rice or something like that.

And where I stayed was very bad, a small room where a lot of people slept.

It was very hot.

I started to question a lot.

When I work hard, why is my life so hard?

It must be something wrong,

because I produce a lot of things, but I cannot get enough.

And I tried to learn, I tried to study.

I tried to study in the university.

It's very hard to learn in university, because it's very boring.

(Laughter)

And when I looked at subjects in the university,

in every faculty, most of them had destructive knowledge.

There's no productive knowledge in university for me.

If you learn to be an architect or engineer,

that means you ruin more.

The more these people work, the mountain will be destroyed more.

And a good land in Chao Praya Basin

will be covered with concrete more and more.

We destroy more.

If we go to agriculture faculty or something like that,

that means we learn how to poison,

to poison the land, the water,

and learn to destroy everything.

I feel like everything we do is so complicated, so hard.

We just make everything hard.

Life was so hard and I felt disappointed.

I started to think about, why did I have to be in Bangkok?

I thought about when I was a kid,

nobody worked eight hours per day,

everybody worked two hours, two months a year,

planting rice one month and harvesting the rice another month.

The rest is free time, ten months of free time.

That's why people have so many festivals in Thailand,

every month they have festival.

(Laughter)

Because they have so much free time.

And then in the daytime, everyone even takes a nap.

Even now in Laos, go to Laos if you can,

people take a nap after lunch.

And after they wake up, they just gossip,

how's your son-in-law, how's your wife, daughter-in-law.

People have a lot of time,

but because they have a lot of time,

they have time to be with themselves.

And when they have time to be with themselves,

they have time to understand themselves.

When they understand themselves,

they can see what they want in their life.

So, many people see that they want happiness,

they want love, they want to enjoy their life.

So, people see a lot of beauty in their life,

so they express that beauty in many ways.

Some people by carving the handle of their knife,

very beautiful,

they weave the baskets very nicely.

But, now, nobody does that.

Nobody can do something like that.

People use plastic everywhere.

So, I feel like it's something wrong in there,

I cannot live this way I'm living.

So, I decided to quit University,

and went back home.

When I went back home, I started to live like I remember,

like when I was a kid.

I started to work two months a year.

I got four tons of rice.

And the whole family, six people,

we eat less than half a ton per year.

So we can sell some rice.

I took two ponds, two fish ponds.

We have fish to eat all year round.

And I started a small garden.

Less than half an acre.

And I spend 15 minutes per day to take care of the garden.

I have more than 30 varieties of vegetables in the garden.

So, six people cannot eat all of it.

We have a surplus to sell in the market.

We can make some income, too.

So, I feel like, it's easy, why did I have to be in Bangkok

for seven years, working hard and then not have enough to eat,

but here, only two months a year and 15 minutes per day

I can feed six people.

That's easy.

And before I thought that stupid people like me

who never got a good grade at school,

cannot have a house.

Because people who are cleverer than me,

who are number one in the class every year,

they get a good job,

but they need to work more than 30 years to have a house.

But me, who cannot finish university, how could I have a house?

Hopeless for people who have low education, like me.

But, then I started to do earthly building, it's so easy.

I spend two hours per day, from 5 o'clock in the morning,

until 7 o'clock in the morning, two hours per day.

And in three months, I got a house.

And another friend who's the most clever in the class,

he spent three months to build his house, too.

But, he had to be in debt. He had to pay for his debt for 30 years.

So, compared to him, I have 29 years and 10 months of free time.

(Laughter)

So, I feel that life is so easy.

I never thought I could build a house as easy as that.

And I keep building a house every year, at least one house every year.

Now, I have no money, but I have many houses.

(Laughter)

My problem is in which house I will sleep tonight.

(Laughter)

So, a house is not a problem, anybody can build a house.

The kids, 13 years old, at the school,

they make bricks together, they make a house.

After one month, they have a library.

The kids can make a house,

a very old nun can build a hut for herself.

Many people can build a house.

So, it's easy.

If you don't believe me, try it.

If somebody wants to have a house.

And then, the next thing is clothing.

I felt like I'm poor, like I'm not handsome.

I tried to dress like somebody else, like a movie star.

To make myself look good, look better.

I spent one month to save money to buy a pair of jeans.

When I wore them, I turned left, I turned right,

looked in the mirror.

Every time I look, I am the same person.

The most expensive pants cannot change my life.

I felt like I'm so crazy, why did I have to buy them?

Spend one month to have a pair of pants.

It doesn't change me.

I started to think more about that.

Why do we need to follow fashion?

Because, when we follow fashion, we never catch up with it,

because we follow it.

So, don't follow it, just stay here.

(Laughter)

Use what you have.

So, after that, until now, 20 years, I have never bought any clothes.

All the clothes I have are leftovers from people.

When people come to visit me, and when they leave,

they leave a lot of clothes there.

So, I have tons of clothes now.

(Laughter)

And when people see me wear very old clothes,

they give me more clothes.

(Laughter)

So, my problem is, I need to give clothes to people very often.

(Laughter)

So, it's so easy.

And when I stopped buying clothes, I felt like, it's not only clothes,

it's about something else in my life,

What I learned is that when I buy something,

and I think about, I buy it because I like it,

or I buy it because I need it.

So, if I buy it because I like it, that means I'm wrong.

So, I feel more free when I think like this.

And the last thing is, when I get sick, what will I do?

I really worried in the beginning, because then I had no money.

But, I started to contemplate more.

Normally, sickness is a normal thing, it's not a bad thing.

Sickness is something to remind us that we did something wrong in our lives,

that's why we got sick.

So, when I get sick, I need to stop and come back to myself.

And think about it, what I did was wrong.

So, I learned how to use water to heal myself,

how to use earth to heal myself,

I learned how to use basic knowledge to heal myself.

So, now that I rely on myself in these four things,

I feel like life is very easy,

I feel something like freedom, I feel free.

I feel like I don't worry about anything much,

I have less fear, I can do whatever I want in my life.

Before, I had a lot of fear, I could not do anything.

But, now I feel very free, like I'm a unique person on this Earth,

nobody like me, I don't need to make myself like anybody else.

I'm the number one.

So, things like this make it easy, very light.

And, after that, I started to think about

that when I was in Bangkok, I felt very dark in my life.

I started to think that many people maybe thought like me at the time.

So, we started a place called "Pun Pun" in Chiang Mai.

The main aim is just saving seed.

To collect seed, because seed is food, food is life.

If there is no seed, no life.

No seed, no freedom.

No seed, no happiness.

Because your life depends on somebody else.

Because you have no food.

So, it's very important to save seed.

That's why we focus on saving seed.

That's the main thing in Pun Pun.

And the second thing is it is the learning center.

We want to have a center for ourselves to learn,

learn how to make life easy.

Because we were taught to make life complicated and hard all the time.

How can we make it easy? It's easy,

but we don't know how to make it easy anymore.

Because we always make it complicated

and now, we start to learn, and learn to be together.

Because, we were taught to disconnect ourselves

from everything else, to be independent,

so we can rely on the money only.

We don't need to rely on each other.

But now, to be happy, we need to come back,

to connect to ourselves again, to connect to other people,

to connect our mind and body together again.

So, we can be happy. Life is easy.

And from beginning until now, what I learned

is the four basic needs: food, house, clothes and medicine

must be cheap and easy for everybody,

that's the civilization.

But, if you make these four things hard and very hard for many people to get,

that's uncivilized.

So, now when we look at everywhere around us,

everything is so hard to get.

I feel like now is the most uncivilized era of humans on this Earth.

We have so many people who finish university,

have so many universities on the Earth,

have so many clever people on this Earth.

But, life is harder and harder.

We make it hard for whom?

We work hard for whom right now?

I feel like it's wrong, it's not normal.

So, I just want to come back to normal.

To be a normal person, to be equal to animals.

The birds make a nest in one or two days.

The rats dig a hole in one night.

But, the clever humans like us

spend 30 years to have a house,

and many people can't believe that they can have a house in this life.

So, that's wrong.

Why do we destroy our spirit, why do we destroy our ability that much?

So, I feel that it's enough for me, to live in the normal way,

in the abnormal way.

So, now I try to be normal.

But, people look at me as the abnormal one.

(Laughter)

A crazy person.

But, I don't care, because it's not my fault.

It's their fault, they think like that.

So, my life is easy and light now.

That's enough for me.

People can think whatever they want.

I cannot manage anything outside myself.

What I can do is change my mind, manage my mind.

Now, my mind is light and easy, that's enough.

If anybody wants to have a choice, you can have a choice.

The choice to be easy or to be hard, it depends on you.

Thank you.

(Applause)