I stopped counting moments

If you ask me how much moments have you collected so far in Asia, I can’t give you an answer. I can give you a rough estimation which is more or less true. But the number I don’t know, because the thrill for me is not about reaching a specific number of moments. The thrill is my curiosity. I’m interested in the stories people tell. How does happiness look like in different countries? How do people react? What is the influence of culture and the place where you live? And I want to cheer people up, just by letting them relive their moments. For both reasons you don’t need a specific number.

After two days of collecting in Nepal I had 150 moments. This is more than the amount of moments I should collect in a country to reach the 1000 target. 1000 divided by the number of countries in a Asia I plan to visit (8) gives 125 moments.
So I could have stopped collecting in Nepal, but I didn’t. Because my curiosity wasn’t satisfied. I only collected in Kathmandu, a lot of them at a college. So I had only seen a very specific part of the population in Nepal, mostly Kathmandu. It makes a difference whether you are in a village or a city. For instance the standards of living differ a lot. And in a village you find a big part of the population to be analfabetic. Therefore I spent two days in a village where fires inside the clay house allow you to cook and rhythm is defined by the seasons or the crops on the fields. Next to the village I went to the monkey temple. I was still curious for people in the streets of Kathmandu and I like monkeys. So what better place than surround yourself with a popular place and monkeys.

Numbers don’t say whether it was a good collecting day. A school class is a good way to convey the bigger story of Seize Your Moments. It’s also good in getting the general picture within a country, because of their numbers. But with 40 people in a class room there isn’t always time for attention for each moment. But the attention for one person is the real power of collecting beautiful moments. That I just listen.

In Europe I stopped counting moments after four weeks and 500 moments, because I knew I would get to the 1000. Counting doesn’t help then. What if you still want to do two countries and you know you’ve reached the 1000? For me that wasn’t encouraging, so I decided not to count. In the end I collected around 1200 moments in Europe. Also for Asia, I won’t count anymore. If I collect in the countries I plan, I’ll make it. The counting I do just before I go to the next continent: Australia. So why do I have the 1000 goal then? Why not just say, go collecting? Because 1000 might not be a the defining goal, its a good starting point. It triggers me and others to get into action and just go for it.

2014-01-10 11.49.55

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