Toil

toil

verb

1. work extremely hard or incessantly "we toiled away"
synonyms: work hard, labor, exert oneself, slave (away), grind away, strive, work one's fingers to the bone, put one's nose to the grindstone

noun

1. exhausting physical labor "a life of toil"
synonyms: hard work, labor, exertion, slaving, drudgery, effort, industry, 'blood, sweat and tears'

Walking through the rice paddy fields in central Bali close to Ubud you can witness the simple, rural way of life with the local people living directly from the land. Their daily life consists of incredible physical hard work and toil in the fields, tending their rice paddies, clearing the drainage ditches as well as looking after their livestock. In the heat of the intense tropical sun and wading through deep muddy pools of water and drainage ditches this is back breaking work and is certainly no easy idyllic tropical island life that we all imagine on an island such as Bali.

However what is clearly apparent is how well these local people look. They may be old, perhaps in their sixties or seventies or even older (it's sometimes hard to judge) but they are physically fit, slim and able bodied. In contrast our puny, overweight city-style bodies struggle in this climate and would not last long in these conditions.

Perhaps it is they who have it right and our modern society with all its apparent modernisation and technology have it all wrong. One thing is for sure; if there was a calamitous world event that would wipe out our existing technology and infrastructure then it would be folks like these that would be the survivors.