Human Development Blog

It was a cold winter night in December, in a small ski town in Engelberg, Zurich, Switzerland. Stepping outside the pub I felt an instant wave of cold scratch my face. Every breath I took in, felt like I would soon be frozen from the inside out. My eyes started to sting from the cold air against their warmth. I took a few steps and then tripped into a wall, using my arm to brace myself from falling in the pure white snow. During those days, Id drink till I hadn’t an ounce of control and my verbal filter allowed me to be at an all-time low. I spoke my mind, like many people wished they could. A German woman I was dating at that time had told me that only baby’s and drunk people tell the truth. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I drank, that, and the feeling it brought me. Maybe I was trying to find the truth, to be honest with myself. Or this was my attempt to escape the feeling and images that held me back from achieving greatness… whatever that was. Looking into the night sky I could see an infinite number of stars that mirrored my desire to have this feeling, this desire, become infinite in me.

            My land navigation skills helped me out in more ways than one. It helped me guide myself home in an intoxicated state. I say intoxicated because there was more than just alcohol in my system during those times. I was on a path to push through whatever feelings and emotions held me back from pursuing the ultimate human experience in happiness, even if it was a synthetic version at that time.

            Pushing myself off the wall and into the cold shadows of the streets, using store lights and the moon to guide my path… One step at a time, back to where I knew I could lay down to sleep off this before my objectives in the morning. When I have entered this state, I call it “The Spirit World”.

            I made it a mile down the road when I decided to take shelter behind, what appeared to be a house on a Shack. I laid my back along the shack walls to escape the chill wind that winded along the mountains in this town. The wall was cold at first, till my body warmed its presence. Every breath filling the air in front of me with a fog, that, quickly escaped with the wind across and down the mountainside. The altitude and cold always made for a better high. Closing my eyes, I knew if I stopped to sleep here, it would be the death of me.

            Within a blink of an eye the door along the shack opened abruptly. A man stepped out, short, a little puggy, white hair and blue eyes, he stared directly at me. His eye contact felt like it pierced my soul. He started to speak in French, then, realizing I was an American after my rough reply back. He began in a different tone,

“What can I help you with sir? You seemed to have startled the animals”.

Looking at him in question, “What animals?”

He waved his hand in a motion inviting me to the door. “The animals in my barn”.

I went to the doorway, as my eyes adjusted to the burning fire in the center of the room. I saw at once, animals; a cow, 4 goats, 4 sheep and some chickens running around. I had so many questions. The man explained to me that in this area, the people build their homes above the barn. For many reasons. The animals heat and the wood burning stove in this barn, which would be equivalent to a basement in America. Kept the house warm at night. The fire and the animal heat, traveling up, made it to where his home was livable in the wintertime without an internal heating system. It felt as though this man was living in a science experiment.

            It was amazing, a free way to keep warm, along with his ability to be self-sufficient in this respect, I was impressed. He explained to me that the waist from the animals would be pushed into one part of the barn till dried, and it could be used as fuel to heat the stove and house. When the animal waste was dried out, it would burn like coals, it also didn’t smell. Any excess he had he would put on a conveyor belt that would take it to a building near the city. That excess waste would be used to power the cities electricity. Like a coal plant created electricity in America.     

            How did Switzerland get here, was all of Europe like this? If so, how. Maybe it isn’t the entire country or continent, I would imagine that France was not able to keep up with its electrical power demand with animal waist. But this was a seed planted in me for future application. You cannot put a price on being self-sufficient. Doing so allows you to live outside of the system, to not depend on it, and to not fall victim to it if it fails you. Who would have ever thought that this was possible? Why didn’t they teach this in school? If this information was so useful and it wasn’t taught in school, what else did that not teach us?

            In a day and age where being successful is a 200k job a year and working from your computer. You leave yourself open to a dependency on that system, it puts you into bondage, a salary can be addicting. You are also trading one set of problems for another. Very rarely do I see someone who works from a computer and doesn’t have a list of problems that are associated with it. Ether it be mental or physical, it’s not healthy. I’ve changed my perception on what success looks like and what a job requires from you in trade for your time. you’re giving up a mind-body connection. You are trading years of your life in trade for that salary. The most valuable thing you can have today, is to learn how to provide for yourself. To learn how to not be a victim if that same system that’s sworn to protect you, fails you. It doesn’t happen overnight. The start to that journey could be this realization… for others, it could be learning how to give up the comfort that we have grown accustomed to, like a meth user always looking for that next high…. The comfort of feeling good. The comfort of on demand heat, water brought to your through faucet, a way to cook food without a fire.

            In my mind, some of us are no better than the cows on a dairy farm. Given our basic needs in trade for our healthy life, physically and mentally. In return, we are milked of every piece of life we have in the name of progress and the belief that we will live a better life.

When I was in the Navy they sent us to over 30 diffeent countries. Not every person in the Navy gets that expereince… It was more so for my rank, rate and position. thatI filled during that period of my life. In my short times that I had to trave abroad while working and my ability to connect with people in a short amount of time. I soon found it a very humbling expereince to live among people and experience their lives in another country. I found that you. canalways learn something from someone no matter their beliefs. I also grew to understand that if the peoples leadership believes and fights for one thing, the people of that country are sometimes on. theopposite ends of the sprectrum? The common man does not have a difference in their needs and wants from the common man in another country. Why? When the 1% of a country, the Aristocrats, wage war. Its the commona man who fights and dies for those who are the catalyst for its start.