For months leading up to this big new life change my husband and I are amid, lingering in the background: a quiet but persistent wondering, tinged with doubt, about whether or not I’d be cut out for this; ready for it; willing enough; able.
With the right attitude, I’m realizing now, anything is possible. More than setting one’s mind to an undertaking or action, a proper angling of mood is necessary. Just as a great photograph is made possible by the right lighting, our outer experience is largely crafted by the quality of our internal landscape.
At a little over a month in, situated on our newly purchased land, sans structures and services, I can say this: we’re doing it. Despite knowing little about how to live off-grid in the woods; despite the low morale moments that crop up; despite the feelings of overwhelm that sometimes seem unbearable; despite my own physical limitations. We’re figuring it out, one slow step at a time. We’re settling in. We’re learning. We’re living a different way of life.
We’re scaling down on our material needs, living within our means, and living debt-free, without Mike needing to work 50+hours of hard labor a week. We’re on the path of cultivating a more simplified way of life.
Simple living is one of those things, I think, that can be both over-glorified and underrated. Otherwise put, it’s easy to misunderstand what it means to actually do it, and not have it be just some grand idea or set of notions that sound good. Everything exists on a spectrum and simplifying one’s way of life is no different. There are many ways to simplify, whatever our circumstances are. Still, there’s a decent chance that any amount of simplifying will require an ability to not get swept up in the sea of societal/collective judgements, at least if one desires to maintain a sense of self-possession and strength.
I recently finished reading Eleanor Roosevelt’s book You Learn by Living, which I found to be an excellent read, BTW. In it she writes: Today, the outer pressures are not as drastic as they have been in the past – the terribly recent past, in some cases – where failure to conform meant imprisonment or torture or even death. They are, however, more dangerous in a way because they are more insidious. These are the pressures to live like our neighbors, to think like our community, to reshape ourselves in the image of someone else. The net result of this surrender is the destruction of the individual and the loss of his integrity…It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.
Her words are a powerhouse of wisdom, in my view. It’s so very easy to fall in line with what we think we should be doing, vs. risking any sort of discomfort of differentness to walk our own path, against the stream. We may say: Who cares what others think?! But the truth is, many of us do care, a lot. It’s worth looking into how much of the life we lead is to appease others or fit in or keep up with the Joneses (which, as Eleanor puts it, is one of the real menaces of our country). To go our own way is truly not so easy.
going outwords & inwords 