19/03/2026
Another country — another lesson 🌏
A flight from Vietnam to Bali.
Arrival in a world of temples, daily offerings, gratitude, and a lived belief in karma:
🙏 What I give to the world shapes my life.
🙂 Friendly faces. Easy smiles. Humility. A quiet joy.
A shared sense of: “What was given to me is good.”
I forget my phone in a Grab (like Uber).
With no way to track him, the driver goes out of his way to return it to me.
✨ There is an omnipresent connection to the numinous — the unspoken, the sacred, the spiritual.
A sense of something larger than us, beyond what we know or can explain.
And then I think of Germany.
Grumpy faces. Heavy expressions. Bodies that seem burdened on the way to work.
⚠️ Depression, burnout, mental breakdowns — on the rise.
And yet: more wealth. Better‑paid jobs. Bigger homes. Larger bank accounts.
So I wonder:
What is missing?
What do the Balinese seem to have — with so little — that we struggle to hold despite so much?
Is it a connection to something higher? A faith in something mystic, inexplicable, intangible?
Do they have sense where we collect possessions, titles, and build up our egos?
What’s your take on these visible — and deeply felt — differences between materially poorer yet mentally richer societies?
And what gives your life meaning, day by day?
If you’d like to explore that question more deeply, feel free to reach out.
-determindedlivings
