Meditation on Living in a Remote, Disconnected Village Oblivious to the World at Large

Is it possible to feel happy and peaceful in a world full of turmoil? How can disconnection from the world bring inner peace?

Have you ever wondered if the world has gone crazy or is it you that’s gone off the deep end?

There’s a plethora of studies telling us that people today see and experience the world as multiple times more stressful than in the decades before. People everywhere are stressed and anxious, perceiving their lives as one of struggle and hardship. Despite living in the safest and most prosperous times in history, many Westerners would characterize life as suffering and hardship, not ease and happiness. 

Do you believe this to be true? Is it possible that despite the objective prosperity and progress, life indeed FEELS more challenging and less kind to this latest generation?

Well, regardless of your beliefs, the facts are undeniable. Everything is objectively much better, and people are simultaneously feeling miserable. Stress is rampant everywhere. Anxiety and other mental disorders are on a rampage in our society. Something is amiss. We took a wrong turn somewhere; it would seem. But what and where?

A few years ago I read an article about an explorer who found a village in the Italian mountains where the villagers were not even aware that there was an all encompassing war (WWII) ravaging through the world and of all the horrors that happened in their own country.

They were so remote and so removed from it all; they just peacefully went on about their day while the world was drowning in conflict and blood. I never forgot that story and the lesson it carried with it. 

I was reminded of it just the other day when a woman deliberately spent 500 days in isolation within the depth of a cave. While the experiment aimed to study the effects of isolation on people, what struck me as interesting was how surprised she was when she found out about the hot war between Russia and Ukraine, happening just around the corner. Realistically she was about as far away from the front as most of us, and it influenced her life about as directly as it does ours (so not much), but she got to enjoy the tranquility of blissful ignorance while we were worried sick, glued to our screens addicted to doom scrolling. But at least we weren’t stuck alone with our thoughts in some damp cave, right?

Today I invite you to take a moment and meditate (think deeply in this case) on such an alternate scenario.

Imagine that you are living in a remote village somewhere, either high in the mountains or in a hidden valley next to a luscious body of water, far removed from society.

You have no internet, social media, television, or newspaper, nothing but what nature provides. You live in a lovely little cottage that is just big enough for your and your family's needs. You have all the basic amenities. You’re not cavemen, mind you. The toilet running water and heating are all available for your comfort. There is plenty of fresh water and food, be it from your garden, the surrounding forests, or livestock, whichever you prefer. Do not picture this as a life of hardship and lack, for it needn't be. This is not the point of this meditation.

We are just looking at what life would feel like, living in a small community, somewhere amid the most beautiful nature, with all that you need provided in some way. One where you would have no access to news, social media, TV, and the internet. This is the crucial part; the rest is interchangeable.

Do take some time to really see yourself living there.

• How would it feel?

• What would you do?

• Who would you live with?

• What would your day look like?

If you cannot imagine yourself in this scenario, as I know many of you can’t, imagine you’re just visiting such a village in this remote paradise and observing, talking to the people who live there. Have fun with this, and don’t overthink things.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself (or them):

• Are you afraid of the next big war? 

• Are you even aware of the armed conflict happening somewhere on the other side of the world?

• Are you worried about politics? Culture wars? Cancellation? Censorship? Racism? AI or anything else that you might be worried about?

• Do you feel anxious during the day?

• Do you have problems sleeping?

• Do you feel stressed out and anxious?

• Does the world seem like a cruel and evil place or something else?

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to take a break for a few weeks and just go and live in a place like that?

Completely disconnected from the world, focused solely on the tasks at hand. If you’re younger than 30, I probably just described your worst nightmare, right?

I suppose this is what vacation used to be before the internet and smartphones. Nowadays, it frankly makes no difference unless you leave those things behind. I’ve tried traveling in a way where not much has changed in my day-to-day experience, including reading the daily news, watching my favorite shows, and scrolling through my social media all day long. In one short sentence - it was a waste of time and money. It felt no different than being at home, just with some new buildings, apartments and faces.

The beauty of this internet connectedness is also its curse.

Perhaps this is the reason I make it a priority to completely ignore the news and social media when traveling these days. Of course, I still use my smartphone to search for things to see, book transportation or accommodation, and as a navigation device, with the added feature of being a camera, but that’s about it. The difference is staggering! I cannot recommend it enough.

Three days of unplugged active travel or holiday triumphs three weeks of the plugged-in version.

I feel relaxed, happy, present, content, and at peace, like you wouldn’t believe. It’s probably also one of the things I love most about traveling with my motorcycle. It forces you to focus on the road, the beautiful world tightly around you, and into the moment at hand. It can be a sort of meditation on wheels. Aching body parts are included in the experience. Priceless really.

No, I’m not telling you to leave your life behind and live in some remote village in the middle of nowhere. I’m merely pointing you toward the origin of your discomfort, fears, anxiety, and suffering. Most of the time, not always to be sure; we worry about things completely beyond our control. Ironically, the vast majority of those issues would never even touch our lives in the real world if we didn’t notice it through our connectedness with everything and everybody everywhere. This may seem like a good thing at first, like a privilege, and it does indeed offer us unparalleled access to knowledge and information we wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise. But it also opens us up to a myriad of problems that have nothing to do with us, causing us to feel intense anxiety, fear, and anger for no good reason.

Think about this for a second. In the old days, you would have known about some horrible local accident or a crime, resulting in people dying, maybe a few times per year. Now you read about them from all over the world every day, and the world is a big place.

Horrible things happen somewhere in the world every single second of every day. Do you really need to know about it all?

Is there a direct benefit in that for you? Are you somehow better off seeing all those horrible images, listening to depressing stories, and involuntarily undergoing similar emotional suffering than the people directly involved? Some would call this self-sadism or even masochism. In any case, we are choosing it voluntarily. We are causing this pain and suffering for ourselves, with no good reason whatsoever. And we are the only ones who can stop it, as well.

Can we somehow engineer our life to be a bit more like a quiet, peaceful remote village life, but with the added bonuses of living in civilization with all of its amenities?

I would wager that we can. I know we can. Our perception of the world is almost entirely self-caused and influenced. How we see people and the world generally will depend predominantly on our fundamental mindset and positive or negative orientation. Furthermore, while we can’t change everything in our lives to cause us less stress, we can stop adding to the fire. There really is no need to force-feed our minds with the horrors of the world. We have enough problems of our own; let those be enough. 

So here are a few steps each of us can take for our life to be a lot more peaceful, tranquil, and happy without having to move physically.

• Cut out the news and social media from your life as much as possible. It’s a net negative for most. Or, at the very least, curate it wisely and only expose yourself to what you actually use (for gathering information…) and what makes you feel better (never worse). Take some time away from it all every once in a while, if nothing else.

• Cut out all the unnecessary drama from your relationships. Don’t argue with people if it can be avoided. Let people live their lives in peace. If there are drama queens in your life or people who tend to either focus on the negatives and problems or attract conflict wherever they go, stay far away from them. Do not engage; there is no benefit for you there.

• Focus your attention and your effort on things you actually control and leave all that is out of your control alone. Let it go completely; it’s not like you can do anything about it anyway. You don’t need to have an opinion on everything, you don’t have to know everything, and you don’t have to get involved (emotionally or actually) with all the drama out there.

• Lower your desires, expectations, and needs as much as possible. No one can have all they want, but we can all want only what we have. Happiness can be a direct byproduct of absolute acceptance of all that is as it is. Indifference is a superpower.

• Strive to live as much in the present moment as you can. There is a lot of truth in the saying that all the fear and anxiety are caused by us being focused on (living in) the future and that all the sorrow, anger, and regret are caused by being focused on (living in) the past. What problems do you actually have at this particular moment? Right now, not 5 minutes from now, tomorrow, or even the next second. Right this moment, in this breath. 

While it is effectively improbable that we should get to live in a tranquil, perfect little village, hidden away from the world, nor is it something we would probably choose for ourselves, we can always create this magical place of peace and harmony within ourselves. In our mind and in our heart.

Outside circumstances matter a lot less than one would imagine. The measure of our peace and happiness will depend predominantly on our minds. And while we can’t always choose our circumstances, we can choose how we perceive them and what we focus on.  

“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself.” Marcus Aurelius

“Happiness is a choice” is one of the wisest words ever written, yet so rarely understood. We shall explore this topic in the future, so make sure you subscribe below and never miss a post.

May your days be filled with love, peace, and kindness, regardless of what circumstances surround you at the moment.

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