the taxi ride which caused me to examine my values

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I had an interesting conversation with the taxi driver who drove me to the airport El Alto in La Paz. I found out a lot about his family life, the story about his 8 year old son and how he had never married his son's mother. It was during Carnavales that she had got pregnant because they had had unprotected sex only the one time but they were never officially together. The taxi ride only took 20 minutes but it was amazing that in that time he divulged so much information about his family situation and how his son came to be. Throughout this whole trip I've found it amazing how willing people are to talk about their sex lives without being asked. It’s expected to get on to the subject at some point during a 10 hour bus ride but during a 20 minute taxi ride, that was quick. I am learning an awful lot.



He then talked about the three most important things he wanted for his son, that he wanted him to marry young, have a stable family life and have a good career. He was sure that without these things his son would be unhappy. I didn't agree with this and was surprised by the ambitions he had for his son, which whilst even in British society these lifestyle choices were still loosely held as the norm I had never considered myself to be unhappy without one of these things. His values seemed moderately important to me but for me it seemed far more important to have healthy relationships with self, friends and a supportive community, to have enough money to eat fresh local food made in my own community, have a good partner who shared my values, own 10 quality outfits, have a roof over my head, earning enough money to live according to my values, having good physical and mental health, having the opportunity to express myself through art or writing and to live a life according to a healthy set of values coming from healthy origins.



I felt his ambitions for his son were over-simplified but that they made perfect sense in Bolivian society. Family life and money were the limits of their society and thinking of more was considered to be beyond reality. From what I knew of Bolivian society I considered it to be a healthy society to live in. I saw their appreciation of community life, self-expression though carnivals, preservation of their ancient language and religion (alongside the Spanish language and Catholic religion), their focus on spirituality, the habit of eating and drinking local produce, basing their businesses around agriculture, connection to the earth and a recent focus on social rights which all to me were signs of a healthy human society. I was more than impressed by the culture. However, I also saw very high levels of poverty in that most people were working all day at a fast, pressurised pace just to survive.I felt it was a shame that a society with such a healthy basis and admirable set of values was desperately poor. I fantasised about how well-balanced people in both Bolivian and UK society might be, if UK citizens could visit Bolivia and see what poverty was really like, worked out the wage they really NEEDED in the UK to SURVIVE (eat well, have a form of lodging and have enough money to not worry about poverty) and give the rest away to poorer societies realising that they were not going to have a worse quality of life by giving up their cars or their material goods which may not (in their case depending on the individual) be contributing in any way to positive mental and physical health. In exchange, Bolivians could visit the UK and understand how hard it is to live in a society in which community is not prioritised, a lot of food is stored, pre-packaged or imported and where our society is based around the economy rather than agriculture. Whilst I admire many UK values, I think we could learn a lot from Bolivian society. For example, I'm sure a lot of UK citizens could gain from connecting a bit more to their communities, connecting a bit more with nature, creativity, self-expressions, eating fresh local food made by somebody in their community.



But who knows? It is unlikely that anybody would want to test the theory. Humans like certainty and therefore changing habits can be hard. After all I imagine most Brits wouldn't want to give up their wealth because they imagine that a bigger proportion of their 'positive well-being' is reliant on it, (bigger than it is in reality) ,probably as a form of habit. I asked myself

'Where had my values come from and why are they not the typical British values?

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