Sunshine State

If your university looks like the place you go to in your holidays and you expect a pool and a bar around each next corner - does that help or hamper your education? Universities in the US - and especially those high-class ones like Stanford, the MIT or Berkley are clubs for kids of the rich. An education here costs about 10 to 15.000 dollar per year. That money does go to the universities itself, and it shows. All new buildings of modernist architecture intermix with classical, old-style university-like houses. There is a free shuttle that connects all parts of the uni with the most important landmarks around the area.

More generally, California seems to be a place where beauty calms the mind. In the same way as one puts flowers on the table to smoothen the signals that reach your retina, to make everything look more pretty and friendly, this place on earth seems to be made to please. No surprise that with the sort of climate here all flowers grow to their full beauty, palmtrees naturally intermix with the strangest and most amazing trees and the calming warmth makes everyone smile. Alongside that stunning nature, the laissez-faire attitude of its inhabitants makes everyone in this state feel at ease and peaceful. For sure, there is problems here, and for sure, if I was not so lucky to stay in the rich places of this part of America, I would probably be more attentive to what can go wrong. I am trying hard to see the downside of this. Well, but, if the only problem is an easy chance for a sunburn and being warm every now and then - I could live with that ;) Where else can you go outside and are greeted with a flowerbouquet and smiling people all around. Compare that to England, where the run down cities make you question the common sense of beauty and you forget a little bit how much your mood enhances just by seeing something colourful and beautiful.

"Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel." ("Sunscreen" by Baz Luhrman)

I wonder why it would make you soft. Is being placed into a bubble bad if you are happy with it? For sure, just eating toast bread makes your teeth go soft, and you get caries more often which will result in pain and loss of teeth. What does becoming soft as a person mean and will it prevent you from coping with life's challenges? Is that something we need, being hard to stand against the world? What does that idea say about us as a society?

We are Free

THIS is the most amazing time and place to be alive. For sure, there have been more, other times to live in, wild, or romantic, violent, changing and boring. However, with the right state of mind and due to our youth, this is the best time. For us. Following generations will claim the same if they are lucky, and we will shake our heads and remember these days. They are probably never coming back, but they will evolve, as we do. We learn. We listen. We create and destroy. We feel, we hope, we love. Continuously. Even through hardships and rough patches, even when when we loose or fail. This is the most amazing time to be alive. We can apprachiate it while it lasts because we are conscious beings, we evaluate and we search for feedback, try to compare our views to others and experience being special all the time. This is of course a very personal sight, as everyone is special in his or her head. If we didnt have this why would we work for ourselves?

This is the most amazing time to be alive. Not the sixties in which every thought was able to light sparks all around. Not the time before where the world still seemed secure. Not the time after which was full of new inventions. It is now. And here. That place is not a location, it is a headspace. We are getting out of our teenage years and we find our place, our niche in which we can be brilliant. We are free.

Living this life with this head and mind makes us creators, stars in our own movie. With our words we blow life into concepts, and into plans and into a life's history. With the right kind of eyes we can see where we came from and where we are going.

THIS is the most exciting possible time to be alive.

"To be an adult means, among other things, to see one’s own life in continuous perspective, both in retrospect and prospect. By accepting some definition as to who he is, usually on the basis of a function in an economy, a place in the sequence of generations, and a status in the structure of society, the adult is able to selectively reconstruct his past in such a way that, step for step, it seems to have planned him, or better, he seems to have planned it. In this sense, psychologically we do choose our parents, our family history, and the history of our kings, heroes, and gods. By making them our own, we maneuver ourselves into the inner position of proprietors, of creators." Erikson, 1987

Pale blue dot

The world is a big empty place. 3/4 of it supposedly isnt even populated. At least, that's what it looks like from the airplane I am on, destination San Francisco. It started in Amsterdam, went straight up to Scandinavia, over Iceland, then Canada.

The seat next to me is free which of course is very fortunate. While the plane I am on is huge, so huge I was surprised it could fly, each individual on it does not have too much space at his or her disposal.

The service here, as was pointed out to me before, indeed is at a completely different level. There is two meals, water and juice are free and they come around ever so often to bring you snacks or warm towels. Every seat has a little personal screen on which one can chose their own entertainment program, with music, newschannels, games, the newest movies, recent ones and all time classics (think, Mrs. Doubtfire). Even writing emails and texts as well as making phone calls is possible (for a little extra money, of course..).

By the way, a warmer climate wouldnt be too bad for the world by the looks of it, at least, big parts of it would become habitable then. Of course, I know, climate changes are bad etc., but seeing our planet from an 11 km distance doesnt make it look so fragile as scientists propose. It is way more strong than we are, and if we annoy it, it will probably just extinct us. The earth will continue to exist, changed or unchanged. Have a look at volcanoes, then you will know what I mean. Take me with you? ;)