A hard-working monarch who lived his dream

His were ahead of the times, but, looking more closely, they must have originated from the belief that human beings in bygone days lived comfortably off the land. In today’s world, paying less attention to money and more to simplicity is easier said than done.
Even watching television programmes in honour of the late monarch demands serious concentration when it comes to the “sufficiency economy”. The programmes generally contain four elements which can be boring if we don’t pay attention – the green of vegetables and crops, the dark brown of soil, the translucence of water, and the noises of a few farm animals.
His idea was that if you can strike a good balance among these four, you will need little else. You will be self-reliant. You will have just enough left to sell and have just enough money to keep things going. But most of all, you will have happiness, pride and dignity, and all these three in abundance.
The TV programmes carry absolutely no political message. Interviewees, in matter-of-fact manner, simply talk about how to get enough water and keep the soil fertile. They don’t criticise anyone for having different ideas. They don’t go out of their way to ask others to do the same as them. They only look genuinely happy and sincerely grateful.
They live off what they sow and feed. They don’t rely on how much profit businesses half the world away make. How fund managers they will never know spend the money of people they will never meet doesn’t concern or affect them. If stock markets crash and banks fall, they will still have enough to eat.
But, make no mistake, it is hard to replicate their lives. It’s a “global village” now and living off the land can mean living remote from most others. That’s a cheap argument against the concept of “sufficiency economy”, though. His Majesty didn’t preach self-alienation; he only taught that everyone is capable of relying contentedly on himself or herself.
You will have to forget supercars or luxurious home entertainment equipment, however. Equally hard or harder still, you mustn’t turn the noble concept into some kind of a crusade. Of course, His Majesty would have liked the whole world to embrace his idea, but he would never ever “cross the line” in trying to accomplish that. If you like his thinking, fine. If you don’t, it’s the same deal.
Being wise, His Majesty must have known that living simply was the hardest thing to do. He obviously did not denounce other economic systems. His “self sufficiency” concept must have formed largely because of the fact that Thailand is an agricultural nation, or simply put, a “food country”. Prudent management of the resources growing from the earth will help the country achieve true sustainability and keep famine at bay come what may.
One may ask how the “self sufficiency” concept affects human ambition, which led to railways, aircraft, smartphones and space travel. What would happen if everyone were content with having enough food on the table and raising children to be happy with the same?
First things first, to assume that self-sufficiency is all about farming must be wrong. The concept is strongly tied to agricultural activities in this country only because Thailand is a farming nation. The truth is, the idea can be adapted and applied to all activities. Not everyone is born to be a farmer, after all.
Secondly, “human ambition” is too tied up with money nowadays. The invention of railways, aircraft, smartphones or space travel have often served the concept of financial profit as much as genuine human progress. Self-sufficiency is all about money-less happiness and opens the way to money-less ambitions. It’s a concept that encourages utilisation of your true strengths and pure collaboration with other human beings for the greater good.
The irony is that to live a simple life you need to step out of your comfort zone. Which is probably the most difficult thing. The green plants, the dark brown soil, the translucent water and the farm animals are not hard to put together, but the will to do so is tough to muster. And when it’s challenging for one man, what about a village, a province, or a country?
Whether His Majesty was an idealistic or a practical dreamer is open to debate, but the truth is this: Many people do nothing about their dreams, yet the beloved monarch tried to make his come true through countless projects, glimpses of which we are seeing in TV programmes that many may consider bland or boring.