Yesterday, for the first time, a twinge of realization that I am getting old hit me. I am 61 now. Working on a PhD. After a year of work and preparation, a monkey wrench has been thrown into things. I have spent the last couple of weeks working through how I can save a major portion of the preparation anyhow and still finish before I am ready to retire.

I have so many thoughts in my mind. I have learned so much over my life. I have been privileged to learn some things from so many different angles and from the perspective of so many different cultures.

This is going to sound arrogant but I know that in all of this I have come to valuable realizations. Realizations that I want to be able to communicate to people in ways that they will see and be motivated to change their lives and see that ultimately change the course of the world.

In the middle of all of this thinking I got my invitation to the 4th Conference on Gross National Happiness to be held in November in Thimphu, Bhutan. I got it because I presented last year at the 3rd conference. I have a few places I still want to go on my list of places to visit before I die. The Himalayas is one. I looked at my bank account and my savings and decided that if I was tight, I could make the trip to the conference. I said something to Aj. Apichai and he called me the other morning and suggested that I prepare a paper to present and that there was money to pay my way.

So I am now preparing a paper for that conference to save myself the money it would have cost me.

I have been re-reading Sen's "Development as Freedom" and a book essentially that is Buddhism for Dummies...though yesterday I saw that there is a real "Buddhism for Dummies" book.

Sen's book talks about how people try to measure development by measuring D. D may or may not be a good proxy. Is money a good proxy for well-being? Sometimes. Not always. And it almost never tells the complete story. As you look more deeply at the story, it turns out that D is dependent on C and C can really be promoted by B but without A it all goes to He|| in a handcart.

I was sitting outside reading and for some reason (maybe insight????) I imagined a dandelion.

Every so beautiful when it is symmetric.

Less so when it is not balanced.

And sometimes it is damaged by its environment.

So I think it is with development. It works best and has its most beautiful results, whether in an individual or a community or a nation, when it is balanced and allowed to thrive and survive in a friendly environment.

I have come to see clearly many mistakes that we (That includes ME!) have made in the west. I am an optimist and believe that things can be turned around but there is so much momentum and inertia behind what IS now. People will not move and change if I scream all of the bad and evil. I have to somehow present an image of what can be so that people make the change by themselves - willingly even passionately.

Aj. Suthida, the woman I share my office with, keeps warning me to keep my thesis small. Not to change the world. But, I am afraid that is precisely what I want to do. Call me old and eccentric. When I am old, I will wear purple AND change the world.

(This image as entitled getting old and wearing purple....it somehow fit in my warped mind!)

I am getting old and don't feel right now that I have time for guilty pleasures until I make my attempt to tell this story in me.