Every now and then the social scientists, to much grumbling about wastes of tax payers' money, produce a world 'happiness rating'. They typically find that countries like Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands contain the happiest subjects which throws out everyone's theories that it's all about the number of hours of sunshine. England drips miserably in somewhere near the bottom. Countries with dictatorships remain unrated. It's probably all rather arbitrary.
I wonder what Bali's happiness rating is. Because it seems as though all the right elements are combined. Life here, for a Balinese, looks as though it might be rather good for the soul.
Despite the rurality of some locations, the Balinese lifestyle is not necessarily 'simple', being complicated by so many ceremonial obligations. We get talking to a Balinese man who has a job at the Agung Rai Art Museum, and who drives a taxi on the side, in his rather limited spare time.
"I am very busy," he says, "sometimes, because I have two daughters and so I am always at the temple giving offerings."
This is because women, even in the temple which most Balinese have in their home, are not allowed to enter whilst menstruating. But the various deities and icons of deities must still be appeased. And so he's often responsible for several persons worth of offerings.
We talk to our guide climbing the mountain. He would like to travel, but aside from the monetary issues he can't leave the country because in his village there are so many ceremonies to attend.
It's hard work, but it knits together so seamlessly. The religion is practised as part of your work, the ceremonies provide your social life, hold your community close and together. Your art is kept alive because it is used as an offering.
And yes, of course some is put on a little for the tourists, but it exists, still, on its own merit. The music, dancing and artistic offerings and decorations for the temple are also performed separately as part of ceremonies which don't involve tourists at all.
Entertainment is also spiritual. We go to the House Of Masks and Puppets in Gianyar. It pulses, not just with the exhibits but with the stories behind them. They have a moral, and they illustrate concepts and symbols which underpin the Balinese Hindu faith.
We travel to a home stay with a family in the heart of rural Taro. We are given dinner and, as we hang around afterwards, the men collect around the wooden xylophone instrument which is a simpler version of the Gangsa or Genda and sits at the heart of all Balinese traditional music, and they practice. One is learning, one teaches, someone else is trying to improve his technique. They are kind enough to let me have a go too. I am very bad at it. But it seems beautiful to me, purer somehow, that this is what they should chose to spend their evening doing. And, selfishly, how much nicer for us, than if we simply had to sit around and stare at Big Brother with them. One man, I am told, is a dancer. I show him the video of my own attempt at the Balinese Welcome Dance. He roars with laughter.
It just seems more healthy somehow. The Balinese are busy but they are not juggling entirely separate entities. Everything is knitted together.
The two most important principles, in both Islam and Christian religions, are, in reverse order, to love your neighbour as you would yourself and - most importantly, to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.'
I always struggled with that one. There are so many people, places, experiences and things for me to love with my mind, heart and soul. I don't know if I can reserve all of it for God. Or how I would find time.
The answer, as someone once explained to me, and which is obvious really, is that you love God through those other things. You love the people and thank Him for them, seeing Him in them, you observe places and feel strongly about them, appreciating His handiwork. The best way to love God is to live and to appreciate, and to reach out and make sure that everyone else is able to have and to appreciate the same advantages.
It seems that the Balinese way of life, in which all roads travel back to their faith, is the embodiment of the heart, soul and mind principle. Are they less stressed, I wonder, because less conflicted? I have a wonderful life and have been very lucky. But I tend to mentally categorize the different strands of work, religion (as opposed to faith, which does manage to weave, when I'm concentrating, through all of them) leisure, family and friends as warring factions, each reaching to grasp the greater part of me, each jealous and distrustful of the other.
It's easy to mythologize another culture. In fact the Balinese way of life includes many hardships. I have seen articles discussing the plight of women in polygamous marriages in Bali (though admittedly a little dated). I have no idea of the truth of that. But I accept that nothing is perfect and that every society has its flaws.
There is a possibility that this faith centred Balinese attitude might die out over time. Was there not an era when we too, in England, produced art as a form of worship, centred our social life around a village faith centred community and worked hard in the fields without condemnation from our fellow villagers because everyone believed in a unifying faith that saw hard work as Godly? And was it better? Or was it stifling? Certainly many of our now revered scientists (Galileo, Darwin) were hounded out of town at the time for 'threatening' the established religion.
Clearly, as I am so often concluding, there is a balance to be had.
But is there not perhaps an argument that the speeding path of technological and scientific advancement has left us rather stranded by our own empowerment. Women I speak to often comment that they feel an enormous pressure to be everything all at once. To be the perfect wife and mother, to keep the chicest house and to hold down a serious career - all whilst looking glamorous and fresh - because we can now. Women can work and have children at the same time. And so they should. And they should excel at it. Neither the children nor the work should suffer any degradation or be in any way compromised because of the other.
But is that really possible? Have advancements in our thinking, the helpful supply of remote working technology not empowered us after all, but simply entrapped us in a cage made from different material? Have we lost the unifying factor which knits the facets of our lives together so that our working hours threaten our marriages, our hobbies make our work seem dreary and negative because it 'steals' a certain number of hours in our day and we are constantly apologising to our Gods and our priests (if we have them) for being so selfish as to work so long purely for the selfish aim of getting money? I am not positing that the unifying factor has to be faith. Many people don't practise a faith. In fact, in this world of warring life factions you might be forgiven for thinking that we are better off without one - one less thing to try to squeeze into our limited hours.
In fact faith itself should not need squeezing - done right it should just be, knitted through our tapestry of life seamlessly. But that's hard to achieve. Partly because society simply doesn't support it - and we are creatures with a herding instinct. We like to be backed up. We like things to line up for us. And partly because even if you do achieve the perfect God centred heart, soul and mind, the other things will still fight against each other. We will be urged to stay late in the office but reprimanded for it on the grounds of our health or our families. We are told inspiring stories of people who worked obsessively for their hobbies, great artists, great writers, but we are told off if we get too 'tunnel visioned' or appear to be putting it ahead of our friends or our partners.
When did we begin to perceive our existence in such fragments?
Or am I exaggerating?
Perhaps the crux of the issue is that I am asking the wrong question. Perhaps it is not fragmented, and it does have a unifying factor. Perhaps that unifying factor is not so unifying after all, but continually marginalises some things and reinforces others, contradicting itself as it goes and demanding such inhumane standards of excellence that we, as its subjects, become worn down and cowed by it. And perhaps that unifying factor was once religion, practised harshly and politically, then government - and now, at least for those countries who have democracy, society.
And each is as harsh a dictator as the other - because essentially what humans have always aspired to - have historically reached for - is to have and be everything.
We want - we have always wanted - to be Mother Theresa with the body of Elle MacPherson, the deft fingers of Michelangelo and the brains and bank balance of Bill Gates. Is it us, and not an outside influence at all, that drives us with such lack of mercy? If there has been a unifying factor, has it been for good or evil?
Because the aim is so honourable. Why should we not aim for greatness in everything? The trouble is we only have so much time. We only have so many hours in the day.
Perhaps it is not because we have no unifying factor, that the aspects of our lives become so fragmented. Maybe we simply don't have enough capacity. Inevitably, therefore, each interest, each honourable aspiration must fight the other for its life force - time.
The answer? Ironically I think it might be unification. But not of the variously warring factions of our lives. But of ourselves. If we thought of ourselves as one huge, world wide team, moving together to make a whole, might we find it easier not to be the best at everything? If we did not have such an innate tendency to compete, might we be able to specialise in a few things, and allow, appreciate and embrace the others as practiced by someone else. Elle MacPherson does her thing. And I dabble in it a bit but don't take it too seriously. Because I'm a bit more in the Bill Gates line of being. So it doesn't matter too much that I can't match her. I can appreciate her beauty though and learn from her beauty tips. That's how she shares her expertise with me. On the other hand she loves that new teleporter device I invented, which can get her to her studio in time. She's interested in how it works but she's not going to try to invent a better one. That's my thing.
It's reductive and simplistic and it sounds a lot like the age old battering system. Which had it's own problems.
I suppose what I am recommending is just a slight change if attitude. An ability to accept others success with pleasure, and not bitterness. Time to try things without the pressure to consistently excel.
Permission to specialise. The humility to accept help. And a society, religious hierarchy or government which ceases to make demands and pronounce judgements, but which concentrates instead, on unity.
And faith (if you have one) as a ribbon which runs through your soul, perfectly harmonised and intertwined with everything you love, feel and think.
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