I received my RD subscription today. Guess what? Front page features a Bhutanese boy with a radiant smile. Coincidence? I don’t know. But the kid in the train and that little kingdom up there in the mountains had been haunting me for quite a while already.
I got curious with Bhutan a year after meeting my little friend in the train. I was feeling so down about something at work that I tried to look for some inspiration. He came to mind of course. So I researched on his native land. I found that the kingdom is referred to as the ‘Last Shang-rila’, I’m not really sure what it meant at that time but it sounded cool. So I kept on reading stuffs about this Buddhist Himalayan country.
The information that really caught my attention, besides those beautiful places, the culture and unique customs of the country, is that Bhutanese prefer gross national happiness over gross national product. Now, that is one characteristic of a nation that’s really hard to understand given that ours is a highly materialistic world. It is often that people equate happiness with material prosperity, right?
But then, happiness is subjective.
I hope that one day I could visit Bhutan. Not just to see the Tiger’s Nest, a beautiful monastery, in person but also experience more of Bhutan’s unique brand of happiness- that which radiates from within.
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