We live in unsettled times. Angry mobs are striking and marching in France. Paris is nearly paralyzed. Protest is pandemic around the world: in Poland they march against a creeping autocracy, in Hong Kong they oppose mainland China's heavy hand, in India they inveigh against a new citizenship law, and in Lebanon, a country so divided by sect and religion that people never agree on anything, they gather in public as one to rail against widespread corruption. Similar protests are taking place, in no particular disorder, in Iran, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Spain and Ecuador, and, from time to time, in the United States and the United Kingdom.
This past summer, seeking some sanity, I flew to Singapore and from there to Switzerland. I struggle to think of any other two countries where the citizenry is as contented. In my imagination, the two countries meld into a single entity: Swissapore.
Plato tells us that the distinguishing gift of the poet is the ability to see similarities in dissimilar objects. I'm no poet, but I've visited Singapore and Switzerland many times over the past 40 years and after my most recent trip I began to better understand what these two seemingly dissimilar countries have in common and why I find them both so healing, a tonic to banish the feeling that the world is falling apart.
