Happy Life or City Life?

I read an article about a Thai who born in a poor family in a village. His name is Jon Jin Dai.

When he grows up, he noticed most of the young people started to move to city area, to get more income and what they so called, to be a successful person. He followed the crowd and decided to try his luck in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand.

Initially he studied in a college as a student. Due to limited funding, he has to work a lot of part times to keep him survive. However, he fails no matter how hardworking he studies. He also living with over 10 people in a small house and eat 1 meal a day. He did a lot of part time jobs, except lady boy.

After 7 years of suffering, he has enough of such a pity life in the city. He decided to go back to the village and start another new life. He did not expect this decision has changed his life.

After settled down in the village, he started agriculture by planting rices and fruits with 1.5 acres land. He also dig 2 ponds to seed fishes. With these foods, he has excess food supply for his family and the surplus are for sale. He felt very happy about this life compared to the previous city life.

After a while, he heard his friend bought a house in Bangkok, but comes with 30 years of long term debts. He is laughing that he can never have chance to do so with his qualification. After some thoughts, he decided to learn and build his own house with his limited funds. Within 3 months, he managed to build his first house. With his talent, he managed to build more than 10 houses over the years. And how he is headache no which house to stay every night!

Apart from building hose, he also setup farming, Pun Pun Organic Farm, organic food restaurants and organize classes to teach others how to do organic planting and foods. His students also including foreigners from Europe and US.

The good thing is, he managed to marry his wife from US.

After that, he received the invitation from TED to give a presentation. And his subject is 'Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?'. You can find the TED video here.

The morale of the story, Jon has messed up in his city life, but he became a leader and winner in his village. What about you?