Disclaimer: I know I am a little more hippie than my family. I was raised an L.L.Bean baby, one who sampled product and romped in the Maine woods. I have crunchier tendencies than many of my relatives, proven when I attended a small liberal arts college in a state also bordering Canada.
I know I have been the one to have strong career goals and aspirations, that I'm the one that keeps following those dreams around the world. As I get older I think I am starting to realize I need something more basic. I've started imagining myself living in nature somewhere, running a rustic inn or bed & breakfast, guiding people on outdoor trips, making bedrooms that smell like pine and lighting a fire in the living room and outside in the fire pit on a regular basis. I want my kids to play with sticks and rocks and make forts with the occasional Monopoly game night but no toys.
Sure, I'm referring to a back-to-basics existence, but have you ever thought about how difficult we've made being a living creature? We wear clothes. We design those clothes. We have our own styles and people who analyze these styles and base their lives around what can and should be worn. We took basic ingredients that are delicious and beautiful and colorful and then decided we needed to have processed food. In plastic, another thing we had to work to make.
Some people call it innovation, but do you ever think it's more work than it's worth?
We spread the world out, requiring transportation and means of communication and pulling us from people we love and who love us. We find people we love, then we move away from them. We go to institutes of higher learning and are told to never settle and to learn more and more, but when you learn more there's just more to learn. It will never end. My to-read book list only grows. My brain only ever has more questions. I only see more possibilities to the point of not seeing any possibilities at all.
We've formulated other living things to be what we want them to be, thereby just making more work for ourselves. I love my dog, but I still have to feed him, exercise him, get him shots, register him with official offices.
I know I overthink most things I come in contact with, but that's just a curse of being human. That won't change, that's what we are made of. Many of the things we worry about are constructions of our brains, but even more often they are based on feelings that we evolved into. Do iguanas love? Probably not. And I bet they never worry if their families are safe or if all their dreams will come true.
The mind is an amazing piece of machinery, but isn't it just another accessory to give us unnecessary challenges?
So maybe someday I'll try to simplify my life. Move to the woods, grow my own food, give my kids a hatchet and some rocks to innovate with all day. But that innovation I've just given them is only going to run rampant in their brains and eventually they'll be some sort of astrophysicist or neurosurgeon. And these jobs will exist and we'll keep striving for greatness and challenging ourselves, just going with the complexity of being human as generations have before us.
I know I have been the one to have strong career goals and aspirations, that I'm the one that keeps following those dreams around the world. As I get older I think I am starting to realize I need something more basic. I've started imagining myself living in nature somewhere, running a rustic inn or bed & breakfast, guiding people on outdoor trips, making bedrooms that smell like pine and lighting a fire in the living room and outside in the fire pit on a regular basis. I want my kids to play with sticks and rocks and make forts with the occasional Monopoly game night but no toys.
Sure, I'm referring to a back-to-basics existence, but have you ever thought about how difficult we've made being a living creature? We wear clothes. We design those clothes. We have our own styles and people who analyze these styles and base their lives around what can and should be worn. We took basic ingredients that are delicious and beautiful and colorful and then decided we needed to have processed food. In plastic, another thing we had to work to make.
Some people call it innovation, but do you ever think it's more work than it's worth?
We spread the world out, requiring transportation and means of communication and pulling us from people we love and who love us. We find people we love, then we move away from them. We go to institutes of higher learning and are told to never settle and to learn more and more, but when you learn more there's just more to learn. It will never end. My to-read book list only grows. My brain only ever has more questions. I only see more possibilities to the point of not seeing any possibilities at all.
We've formulated other living things to be what we want them to be, thereby just making more work for ourselves. I love my dog, but I still have to feed him, exercise him, get him shots, register him with official offices.
I know I overthink most things I come in contact with, but that's just a curse of being human. That won't change, that's what we are made of. Many of the things we worry about are constructions of our brains, but even more often they are based on feelings that we evolved into. Do iguanas love? Probably not. And I bet they never worry if their families are safe or if all their dreams will come true.
The mind is an amazing piece of machinery, but isn't it just another accessory to give us unnecessary challenges?
So maybe someday I'll try to simplify my life. Move to the woods, grow my own food, give my kids a hatchet and some rocks to innovate with all day. But that innovation I've just given them is only going to run rampant in their brains and eventually they'll be some sort of astrophysicist or neurosurgeon. And these jobs will exist and we'll keep striving for greatness and challenging ourselves, just going with the complexity of being human as generations have before us.
1 comment:
Stop pondering and get back to work!
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