Figuring It Out

‘We are just kind of figuring it out as we go along’, I say pretty often these days as I reconnect with friends who are living in the U.S. They are interested in our country life, wondering how we are doing having moved from a flat in the heart of a busy city to where the forest meets the mountains. We are trying to become more and more sustainable. Spring is just around the next bend and we are beginning to plant starts and imagine growing our garden, flock, and maybe even build a barbeque. We are trying to figure out the healthy balance between hosting people and events, and just being the two of us alone. We are always cold these days, the winter sun is bright and warm, but not enough to change the temperature of the house enough to warm our bones. We recently found out the hard way how expensive heating is, and are seeing it as a new challenge to overcome. How do we stay warm, what is the most efficient and cost effective way to heat the house? 

The days are growing longer and longer and I know that as soon as we have that question answered, it will be time to figure out how to keep the house cool and keep mosquitos out. There will always be new challenges, but it doesn’t feel daunting. It feels hopeful and exciting to be constantly learning. It feels like we are learning a new trade, but it’s just learning how to live, how to do life with the living things around us. We are learning how to go back to basics, the thing we abandoned years ago when factories and consumerism conquered the world. People learned how to take the ‘easy way out’ by having machines do it for them, then they were able to work more and more hours in offices designing computers and then the corporate world boomed and the dot com world took off, and what was made ‘easier’, in effect became ‘harder’, and the need and desire to produce, produce, produce took over.  

When I visit the U.S., I have learned that when you say you are ‘busy’, what that actually means is that you are important. The busier you are, the more important you are. But what people don’t realize, is that the busier they are, the more they miss out on life and love and spirituality and just the people around them. Slower life isn’t always easier, but it is always more rewarding. When you make time for connections to the earth, to people, to plants and animals, depth happens and your soul gets filled. In the lives of busy people, their souls are ignored. 

I want a soul that gives and receives, that is full and deep. I want time to notice the generosity and kindness around me, and time to be generous and kind. That takes thought, which takes time. So I think I’d rather be judged for being slow or ‘un-productive’ rather than soulless and unkind. And that, we are just figuring out as we are going.