As you know my posts are usually written on current matters of the Internet, however this’ll be an extraordinary one, as you won’t be reading about something related to IT or the web, instead I’ll be urging you to try to enjoy the wonders of our existence, nature or anything that’s part of our lives and can be perceived as genuinely good. I believe that our individual circumstances and the hi-tech world around us make us take in way too much information and create way too many problems to deal with, and we’re simply not able to enjoy life’s happy moments. We should take some time off, exit the system just for a few moments and be happy for what we’ve got.

I’m not just writing this, because the current period of my life may not be particularly enjoyable. Instead I recently came across a presentation about well-being and the quality of life, which I’d happily recommend you to watch. If you have approx. 18 minutes, please do so.

Nic Marks, nef (the new economics foundation) fellow and founder of the Centre for Well-being thinks that quality of life is measurable, and that true contentment comes not from the accumulation of material wealth, but from our connections with others, engagement with the world, and a sense of autonomy. Nic is particularly keen to promote a balance between sustainable development and quality of life and in order to investigate this, he devised the Happy Planet Index, a global index of human well-being and environmental impact. People in the world’s wealthiest countries, who consume the most of the planet’s resources, are not on the top of the list in terms of well-being, which raises the question: what purpose does unfettered economic growth serve? Check out the presentation below: