I discovered the American writer Linda Leaming when I read her book, Married to Bhutan in which she describes her life in Bhutan after she first went there to teach English twenty years ago. Her story was extraordinarily familiar to mine. Like Linda, I also moved to another country to work, married a foreigner and ended up making a home in an unfamiliar mountainous region – The Catskills – but Bhutan is more or less the exact opposite of America. Although what the two countries have in common is a populace that works very hard, there are so many striking differences – like their happiness despite the comparative lack of convenience. Americans are devoted to the pursuit of happiness, but the Bhutanese actually have actually achieved it. Bhutan’s secret to happiness is time plus the nurture of its environment, which comes at the expense of the aforementioned convenience. Americans can learn a lot from both the Bhutanese and the people of the Catskills (more on that later).

This podcast was taped back in 2012, one of my first interviews conducted on WIOX and the one that has received the most feedback. I hope you find it as fascinating as I do all these years later. Find her husband’s artwork here.

J.N. Urbanski