Are we all in prison?

The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart. –Thich Nhat Hanh

Freedom, what does it mean? I visited a local prison last weekend; I can tell you that the prison was “slightly” different which I we have used to see in Finland.

The prison is made for 300 inmates…currently there are about 900 inmates. You can do the math.

While we there we talked about some issues and one of them was; are we living in a prison or are they living in a prison? Literally they are but at the same time they can be freer than we are outside those gates.

So what is freedom?

Does it mean that we are not locked away or we are not under some foreign government or under some evil dictator?

I think freedom is how you think and act. I think freedom is to be able to control yourself. The question is: Are we really living free or are we prisoners of our own lives? Do we actually control our thoughts and our decisions? Is our body telling us what to do?

Many of us lives in a prison, prison of habits, prison of routines, prison of life. When we can’t get away from our routines or habits it means that we are living in a prison. It can be even worst than being in actual prison because there you can still control your thoughts and your actions but if some “force” is keeping you under command, making you do stuff you shouldn’t be doing, it means that you are living in a prison, prison of your own life.

Escape completely, like they say on the Princess Cruises ships, escape from yourself!! Don’t eat junk food everyday just because your body tells you to do that or don’t walk on the same routes everyday. Do something different, escape from your routines, escape from your prison. Escape from your life.

Some people spend their whole life living in their neighborhood and vacations they spend in their backyard complaining how things are so miserable.

They live in a prison.

We can choose, we can choose to be free. The person who is keeping you in that prison is YOU and only YOU can free yourself from there.  

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. –Abraham Lincoln

If we think about our lives and if we think about how many our decisions have been influenced by something, something external or even internal feeling or thing? For example: we know we should work out and eat healthy. Do always do that or does our body tell us what to do? Most of the times our body is the one who tells us what to do! Am I right? I know I am.

What about the decisions we make…Like working, how many of us work willingly??? Or do we work because we have to? We need the money. There are certain standards in every society which we are meant to follow. Most of us follow those rules and regulations because we have to, not because we want to. Is that freedom?

Free will and happiness goes together. Being control of your life make you happier. Making own decisions accordingly what is good for you; make you happier.

We shouldn’t do things like we have always been doing just because we have always been doing them or we shouldn’t eat all the junk food just because our body is telling us to do so. Of course we have to listen advises from other people but also we have to listen our own body just to know what is good and what is bad for us.

Living in freedom is happiness.

Living in prison is unhappiness.

I choose to live free. I choose to be in control.

If my body says that I should eat some sweet I can say no; and if it says that I shouldn’t work out just because it feel tired, I still will do it. I am controlling my life. I am in charge.

If I can do it, sure can you.

I want to be happy so I choose to be in control.

What does it mean, be in control? It means that you will do decisions based on knowledge not desire. I take advises but I still make my own decisions. Decisions which are right for me! I don’t let the pressure from outside to affect my decisions. I am in control. I am in charge.

If you want to be happy, set a goal, commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes. – Andrew Carnegie

What love got to do with it?

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.  ~Stacia Tauscher

Being so many kilometers away from all your love ones can be hard, I had one of those days yesterday. It was my kids birthday!! They are 7-years old now and they will start school this year!! I will miss their first school day. L I can see them being nervous and really waiting to see how the school is on their first school day. I so would like to be there, support them. Give them courage. But I will miss it. L I have missed so many things like weddings and birthdays. Life is about choices and decisions and we can’t get all the things we want. It is hard to miss all the special occasions. Choices & decisions!

While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.~Angela Schwindt

I feel lonely. I am surrounded with hundreds of people everyday around the world and I feel lonely. I have so much love in my life but still I feel lonely. I am blessed with great family and amazing friends. I have amazing women in my life. My life is good but still I feel lonely. It is not fair. I don’t want to feel lonely but it is part of this life style.

As the sea is beautiful not only in calm but also in storm, so is happiness found not only in peace but also in strife.
IVAN PANIN, Thoughts

I have been travelling for years now and I should be used to loneliness but I’m not. Due to my happiness I am able to live with loneliness, far away from my love ones but still there are days that it just feels really hard.



Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

Franklin P. Jones

On the other hand it is good to feel, it is good to miss so I know that I am capable to love. To give love and receive it! Being alone so much have given me opportunity to explore myself, feel and see how much I love all the special people in my life.

Without love I wouldn’t be here doing the things I do. Love has given me strength to carry on. All the love and support from my family and from my friends have helped me to achieve all my goals and dreams so far. Love is the cradle which has kept me on track.

I know that I can always go back home and I can always get help if I need it and that has been my safety net on my adventures. Having a safety net has helped me to go further without fear and get more from life itself.

I love the people in my life and they know that because I say that to them. I only say that when I mean it and I find it really important to say that from time to time.

I love you.

Sometimes it is difficult to say it but it shouldn’t. You should be able to express yourself to the ones you care. Sincerely and honestly!

 “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”
George Sand

So love is everything, love is a feeling, love is power, love is strength. Love is good, love is kind. Love is around us and inside us. Love is everywhere!

Love is happiness.

Having love in my life is huge part of my happiness puzzle. Without love there is no happiness.

But there are so many different types of loves. You can love yourself, you can love your family and you can be in love. It really doesn’t matter what type of love you have, you just have to have it.

   -LOVE-

PS. I found out my blood type today…it is B+!!! J

BE POSITIVE!!

How cool is that??? That explains a lot!! J

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.

Leo Tolstoy

The way we live in Freetown, Sierra Leone

If we think about our life’s we only remember moments, sad moments, and happy moments.

Life is about moments.

Some live in moments and some create moments.

I do both.

Everyday is a challenge and everyday is different here in Freetown on the 

AFRICA

MERCY

Able to live in a moment brings happiness. -Ville Patrikainen   

Yesterday the Bosun who is my right hand man, stopped me and told me that his girlfriend is in critical condition in a hospital. That happened around 19:00. So I offered to take him to that hospital and so we went. Here in Freetown the traffic is horrible and there are no rules, traffic lights or street lights and because of all that, is always a challenge to drive here. We arrived to our destination but it wasn’t a hospital, it was her home. She lives up onto mountains about 45 minutes drive away from the ship. Anyway we finally got there and we stepped off the car, it was pitch dark and we were somewhere in the city…We had to walk between houses, downhill, on the slippery road and it took us about 15 minutes to get to her house. We found her lying in her bed, shivering; I think she had a fever. How Bosun described me her condition was like she was dying!! Luckily she wasn’t. We prayed for her and Bosun had two bottles of olive oil with him. Yes, olive oil. First the olive oil was put on her forehead and then Bosun and she drank it. Yeap, they drank olive oil. The purpose of doing this was that his faith was in that bottle and he could transfer the power of heeling from the bottle to her. Interesting! It was really WOW. It is strange to put faith in some kind of form but I think it was a good thing. If a person really believes that something can heel her or him it will help. The power of believe can be really strong. She was working today; she is one of our day volunteers so maybe the olive oil helped!

Another interesting event happened to me on last weekend. I was riding a motorbike taxi and while riding on it I was thinking the fact that most of the drivers are ex-child soldiers, who got their bikes from the government that they could be integrated to the society! Hmmm…is it really safe to ride on those?? While I was thinking that brakes got broken and we hit a tree!! Amazing!! I got into accident in Africa, it wasn’t the first time but that is a different story. Okay we hit a tree but I managed to jump off the bike before we actually hit the tree and at the same time I grabbed and pulled the driver off the bike too so nothing really happened to us. The bike got little damage but that’s it. It was really funny at the end because I was holding that guy and he was hanging like being in a hanger from my hand. I don’t know why I grabbed the guy, everything happened automatically. It was just funny!! J

Also another exciting event happened like a week ago. I got called in the evening that there was a boat in distress; they ran out of gas, just next to our ship, we tried to call the port authorities but they didn’t respond so we lowered our rescue boat to help them. I went down with couple deck guys and we tried to tow them ashore.

We tried…

...and we tried!!! J

Our small rescue boat wasn’t strong enough to actually tow the boat so we just ended up going circles and further away from our ship!! We were useless!! J Finally the local pilot boat came to safe the day, they took over and towed the boat ashore. It was a good exercise for us. Exiting event!! A rescue operation!! J

Today another boat had problems with his engines and she was drifting next to our ship. We called the pilot and they responded promptly which is great. The pilot boat towed the boat away!! All good!!

All these events were moments, moments which I will remember rest of my life. Amazing moments! Happy moments!

We should create moments or at least see the moments as a special occasion that we could remember them rest of our lives. For me small things have been most memorable like drinking wine with amazing people in candle light, listening good music. Simple but happy moments!

                                                                         I love life, I love moments.

If I think the time here in Africa I remember the challenges and one of my biggest challenge has been the people here on the ship. For me it is hard to believe that people are people were ever I go. I am dealing same kind of issues here than I have been dealing on the cruise ships. I thought that people here would be different. No, in general they are the same. Of course here are some amazing people who are doing amazing job but still here are some individuals who behave like jackasses in the name of God. I have been having some difficulties to understand these people. Why they are here and why they are behaving the way they are? I came here with an attitude that we can change the world and I thought everybody else are here thinking the same. NO, Ville, no. Sometimes I think I am just a young kid who thinks the world is perfect and everybody is nice to each other. Again and again I found that is not the case. The world is not perfect!! Why I still believe the goodness of people? Why I still believe that we can change things? Because I want to!!!
I want to live in a perfect world. My world is perfect. The world we are living is not perfect but I love my life and it is perfect. I don’t want to become miserable old men who don’t believe in anything and complains about everything. I want to believe and I stand behind my believes. I want to live in my world which is the perfect world for me. That makes me happy. I want to believe in love, in people and in life!! I believe that there is only one life, one opportunity to enjoy all the beauty in this world. I don’t want to waste my time here, I want to enjoy!

Happiness is to enjoy the ride, ride of life. –Ville Patrikainen

RIDE ON!!!

What is happiness?

“Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of travelling” –Margaret Lee Runbeck

I am happy or am I?

I have found happiness but can I be sure that I am really happy?

Is happiness my ultimate GOAL?  

What is happiness and what I get from it?

There is no perfect life and there is no life without sadness or problems. Happiness is strength to overcome all the challenges on our way. Happiness is not a destination, is a way of travelling and to found happiness we just have to look inside us. The happiness is in us. What ever country or society we live in, we all have the same desire: to become happy.

So yes, happiness is my goal. My ultimate goal!

Buddhists believes that happiness is the ultimate freedom from suffering…I like that and I think it is true. Basic human being is to be happy, when all the bad thoughts are taken away only thing left is happiness.

Happiness is the present moment, is neither the past nor the future. Happiness is now. We can’t think that we would be happy when we get married or when we get the job we have always wanted. That is not happiness. Happiness is in that moment we are living right now, it is the way we choose to live. We make our decisions according to our happiness and the out come is the result of our state of mind.

I choose to be happy.

Happiness brings me joy, it brings me pleasure.

“Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholehearted, one directionally, without regret or reservation”. –William H. Sheldon

I had amazing weekend and it wasn’t great because amazing things happened, it was great because of my happiness. I am in the poorest part of the world and there are not so many things to do but still I enjoy every minute and every second while I am here. I find joy from small things. I find energy from people which bring me happiness.

Simple things make us happy. I had a quite routine work week, no big drama or great challenges, just work. On Friday I organized our department to get together and we went to the beach. Some of our local workers have never been on that beach!! They have lived their whole lives here but they have never gone to these gorgeous beaches!! Amazing!! So they really appreciated that day and it made them happy!! Such a small thing!

On Saturday I visited the Chimpanzees sanctuary which was really cool and in the afternoon we made few dives. It was extreme diving because the current was so STRONG!!! I got drift away so many times and we got separated few times but I did enjoy it. It was a good day.

On Sunday we just had lunch in a really nice beach restaurant with few friends.

It was a great weekend.  A beach, good company and nice food! Perfect.

Happiness is about small things.

“Happiness is something that you are and it comes from the way you think” –Wayne Dyer

HAPPINESS AND FAITH

“Happiness is a spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude” –Denis Wailey

Time here in Africa is a journey to me and while travelling in this path of happiness different feelings and emotions goes through my mind everyday. One huge thing is my faith. What to believe?

Is there a God?

If there is a God, where he came from?

What is heaven?

What is the purpose of life?

Is there absolute truth?

All these questions go around my head all the time.
This is really emotional time for me.

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and the end of human existence” -Aristotle

I have googled some of these questions and when I googled “what is heaven” I got interesting answers. One of them was that there was a war in heaven. (Rev. 12:7) and there was violence in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 11:12). Argument was: do we really want to go in the place like that?

No comments.

My point is that people just see what they want to see. Faith is like being in love. Love is blind so is faith. People see the God as they want to see, like they do with their faith. People believe what they want to believe.

So what is my faith?

I believe that we all have our own God which guides us on our journey. Why but a name for it? I feel closer to Buddhism than Christianity and I feel that my journey might take me to Tibet to search for ultimate happiness. I have been fascinated by Dalai Lama and Gandhi. I have been reading about them and studying their thoughts. I find them interesting. I am curios to see if I could be happier. The time will tell if I will end up someday searching for happiness in places like Tibet. Maybe…J

Life is an adventure and that makes it amazing.

It is good to be alive!!

Good Morning Sierra Leone

THE GOLDEN RULE!

One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself

That is the official

GOLDEN RULE.

I didn’t know that there is a rule like that but apparently there is.

Am I better than others?

How we know are we better than others? 

Who can say am I better than others?

"What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either".  Sextus the Pythagorean

There is only one world and we all live on it. Are we all equal or what separates us?

We watched a video clip about how we treat other people and there was a good point. We meet random people all the time but we treat them differently according to their position. We treat them according to their value; their value to us. The more value people have for us the better we treat them. Is that right?

Should we treat everybody as equal?  

I believe we should. I believe what goes around comes around. So how we treat other people reflect back to us, one way or the other.

Small things make a difference like saying good morning or just asking how things are can make a difference. I can see it everyday when I walk around talking to people. People smile to me when I say good morning or good afternoon. I try to treat everybody in a same way and that helps me in many ways. Every time I need something it is easy to ask because I have treated others in the same way, also every time someone smiles to me I get something from it, I get energy. A smile gives me energy.

“Smile and the world will smile back to you.” –Ville Patrikainen

Of course the world is not perfect and there are people who are always crumby and rude even if you treat them nicely but just because someone doesn't treat you like they would like to be treated don’t mean you should do the same to them.

We are all humans. We are flesh and blood. Inside we all look alike. So why there are racisms? Why blacks, yellows and whites can’t live in harmony??? What makes the black people so different to us white people? Skin color??? Sounds so stupid!!! We segregate people according to their color…We don’t do it with other stuff!! Would be silly to valuate a house according to its color or to valuate a car based on its color. But we do it with people. We treat other people according to their value, according to their color.

Funny thing is that we get value when we are tanned. The browner we are the more valuable we get. But it doesn’t work with black people. If they try to get whiter they just loose their value. J

Who can judge other people? Who can say what people’s value is? I can’t.

I can judge myself; I know what is right and what is wrong. I do my own mistakes and I learn from them. This is my life and I am the judge of it.

I follow the laws as they are guidelines for all my actions and if I break the laws I will get judged accordingly. Fair enough.  

   Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

We create our own world; we know what is right and what is wrong because we can feel it. If we do something wrong which we wouldn’t like to be done to ourselves we feel it and we know it is wrong. That is how we know what is right and what is wrong. We learn by feeling things.

We don’t want someone to steal from us. We don’t want someone to kill us. We don’t want someone to burn our house. We feel it what is wrong!! We know it inside.

EVERYTHING WHICH WE WOULDN’T LIKE TO BE DONE TO OURSELVES IS WRONG!

We feel it. We know it. So why we don’t treat other people like we would like to be treated?

It is super important to listen yourself and explore your feelings that you know what is wrong and what is right. All the answers are inside you. Just ask would you want it happen to you? Or would you like to be treated like that?

Positive people attract other people. By being positive and treating others equally you will double your changes to success in life.  

By listening people we learn, everybody has their story and everybody has made some mistakes from which we could learn but we have to listen to hear people mistakes and learn from them. Feel the stories and feel what is right and what is wrong. The more you listen and feel the more you learn and better you will get. The better you are the better life is.

Be able to listen is a valuable asset.

“Treat people like you would like to be treated and listen”. –Ville Patrikainen

Life is amazing, we feel, we breathe, we are alive. Let’s start living!!!



My sex is on FIRE!

“Challenges come so we can grow and be prepared for things we are not equipped to handle now.

When we face our challenges with faith, prepared to learn, willing to make changes,

and if necessary, to let go, we are demanding our power be turned on”.

Iyanla Vanzant

Life is good.

The fire inside me has been burning heavily. All the visions, hopes and efforts regarding my work here in Sierra Leone are fading …I have been feeling more frustrated and disappointment due to different issues.

This is a hard work but I knew that before I came here. The job is sucking lot of energy from me and it has started to affect me. Everyday day is a challenge, EVERYDAY is different. I wake up every morning hoping that nothing dramatic would happen. I have been strong enough to just laugh when we face new challenges but how much can I take?

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Winston Churchill

I feel that we don’t get all the things done we could get done. People are wasting time. I don’t feel that there is a great spirit to make things better. I feel alone…

But I haven’t lost my fire.

Any small thing makes a difference.

We still have problems with water and that will never stop. Last week we were struggling to get any water and yesterday one of our water pipes got broken, so we had to shut down the whole system for a while. Also yesterday during the football match against local team; one of my guys got injured. He is still in our medical center recovering, he got a major hit to his head and he wasn’t able to respond on anything for a long time.

Garbage system doesn’t work, our garbage haven’t been picked up for a week now and normally it should happen every second day.

I lost one of my day volunteers due to misunderstanding, the normal story from the world I have been living the last 4 years, a boy meets a girl and they are from different culture, they go out together, start kissing and the girl says no but the guy think she means yes. I heard that happened many times on the cruise ships. I don’t know all the details but no one got hurt and as I understood no any official criminal actions was conducted. Just misunderstanding! Both were sent home and the case is still under investigation by the local police. These are just a few examples for all the challenges from last week. WAU!!! J

We have had lots of changes in our department and we have few more coming which is hard for all of us. We are loosing good men which are affecting our efficiency. But what can we do? We have to play with the cards we have been handed to.

 

Let’s get to the fun stuff…Wednesday salsa night was awesome. We went to the Aberdeen to a place called Atlantis which is a restaurant on the beach. We have been going there few times for salsa lessons. Our salsa teacher is ex US marine and he really doesn’t look like a salsa teacher!! J His teaching method is…interesting! It’s like being in an army!!! J How it is possible to teach salsa in military way??? My opinion, no possible!!!! We had lots of fun anyway and we all learnt few new moves!!!  

On Friday we had few beers (not on the ship!!) and Saturday was a movie day. We watched quite a few movies on that day. On Sunday we made a diving trip to a wreck. We took our rescue boat and head to the lighthouse diving site. That trip was amazing!! Good fun. Dan, our diving leader managed to get few craps which we let go later because they were so small but it was good fun catching them. In the evening on Sunday we went to this local movie theater which had a movie called The American. The cinema was quite nice but the movie wasn’t the best! J   I had a good weekend. Amazing!!



We celebrated the US independence day!



I have been filming almost everyday to get more material to our happiness project and the more I have been filming the more I have been noticing the small things in life. I have started to see different angles and those angles are the small things which make me see more happiness, like a smile or a laugh or just a child playing with a ball or anything beautiful. This filming project has been really therapeutic. Nowadays I spend more time just looking things. I am not in a hurry, I don’t stress, and I just look. Happiness is everywhere, we just have to stop and look around to see it.

Regardless all the challenges I have had and all the difficulties, I have found more happiness everyday. This journey of searching for happiness has got me deeper into to the world of happiness and I feel I am growing as a human being because of all the challenges and all the happiness around me. I have learnt many things from the people here on the ship and also from the people of Sierra Leone.

I started writing this blog in the morning and since that so much have happened!!! I am on fire!!!!! I received email from Finland. The email was replay for my request for stability program for the ship and they said YES!!! J YES!!!! How cool is that!!! We might get a new stability program from Finland!!! Amazing!!

Also another thing happened…I googled: “Finnish people in Sierra Leone”, and I found out that we are funding, we Finnish people, an education program in the near by city. So I contacted them and got invited to visit them!! How cool is that!!! Next Saturday we are heading to Bo, which is the second largest city in Sierra Leone. A road trip!!! J I am super excited!!! We are taking a government bus which takes about 5 hours and we are staying overnight there. We will visit the school and we get a tour around Bo. Wau!!!

So in the morning I was feeling that my fire is fading but it is fully on now!!! J

Last thing…My sex is on fire!! It is a song. What does it mean, my sex is on fire???? J

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. – Robert Brault