hope

Doing Your Best

We are told to do our best, sometimes from our parents, sometimes from our friends and spouses.  These wonderful people in our lives mean the best for us; they are empathizing because we are important them.

But doing our best is really a personal decision on our part, and doing our best will often not bring about the consequences that we want or expect, except for one.  Here are some things that are important to remember about doing your best.

  1.  Doing your best is always worth it.  No matter the situation, no matter your station in life.
  2.  Sometimes your best is not good enough.  This is OK…if it’s your best.  Learn from it and next time your best will be better.
  3. Others may not appreciate the best that you can do.  Doing your best, however, is not for the sake of others.
  4. Your best is an ideal that you will never achieve.  Doing your best is really a virtue, and as such, it is a goal rather than a reality.

So, keep doing your best and know that sometimes, maybe often, you will fail.  But keep trying to raise the bar and just maybe, just maybe you might surprise yourself at what you can achieve.

The Importance of History

The history of humanity often reads like a continuous war, an unending barrage of violence and trepidation; even when things are good.  To make matters worse, much of historical human violence seems based on fear and greed rather than the battle against those very real villains that have existed and continue to exist today.

And it is difficult to remember that we have made progress;  things are better even though when one looks out the window of their mind they see the continued stupidity, the gargantuan greed, and blindness towards the true evils of the world.

Things are getting better; history shows us that it is.

The importance of history is not only to remind us not to repeat it, but also to teach us what we need to do in order to continually progress against the true villains of humanity: greed and ignorance towards all life on earth.

When we remember, just a few decades ago, how things were we can then say to ourselves that we have progressed even in the torrent of continued barricades.  It is difficult to do so, but we must, yes, we must keep the faith that we can do better and that there are those that will do better.

Things are getting better; history shows us that it is.

Ideals

Hopefully we all have ideals: those beliefs, those ideas that are just out of reach; those things that motivate us to act.  Ideals are often defined by what we do when no one is looking; what we think when no one is around.  Some ideals are lofty and unattainable, and sometimes the bar is simply set too low.

There is a correlation between ideals and happiness, and yet often our ideals can make us miserable.  We do not live up to the ideals that we have set for ourselves.  Failing to live up to our own ideals is worse than failing to live up to others’ expectations.  In philosophy those with less experience  often pose the question: “What is the meaning of life?”  There are problems with this question, but one of the main issues is that it does not answer the question that we all really want to know.

Our ideals often lead us down a path, a rabbit hole.  We presume to know the consequences of our idealistic actions, but we are often wrong.  We find, with time, that our ideals do not lead us to the one thing that we all crave: happiness.  Our ideals, ironically enough, can easily lead us to the sense of failure and doom.  Not only can no one else live up to our ideals, but neither can we live up to our own.

A conversation had of late reminded me of that.  If our ideals are making us miserable it is perhaps because we are not asking the right question.  As Daniel Dennett pondered, cranes must be built from the ground up.  In the same way our ideals must be built upon what makes us happy.  If we start from a belief that we can be happy, then our ideals will follow.

So, what is the meaning of life?  There probably isn’t one.  However, How can we be happy?  That is  an ideal that is up to us.

The Enemy of the Good

permaculture poster

It is difficult to wake up every morning and face the day, knowing that something that you will do will…fail.  But, this is inevitable; no matter what we do: we will fail.  Failure is a source of stress and frustration, anger and sadness; failure builds like a bomb inside of us and weighs down upon our shoulders.  Failure is physical.

But fail we will.  Some call failure an opportunity and others call failure a learning adventure, but when we lay our heads down at night to fall into a fitful sleep it is failure that we feel, it is that deep feeling that we did not quite make the grade.  This feeling of failure starts early and is experienced often.

This much is true; this much is the case and it must be the case.  But why do we fail?  This was a question that has been posed for eons and answers are many.  We fail because we do not try; we fail because we do not believe in ourselves; we fail because we have been told we will fail; we fail because we tell ourselves we will fail; we fail because to many anything less than perfection is failure.

Anything less than perfection is failure?  I have been a full time farmer for approximately a year and if I did not know that perfection is an illusion, then farming has taught me the hard lesson that it is, in fact, illusory.  We can gnash our teeth and pull our hair out; we can cry and obsess; we can wail and scream at the gods or we can remember that we should never let the perfect…be the enemy of the good.*

*Sam Harris: Waking up

 

Ten Things to Make you Feel Better

expectations

 

In this age of Trump, fake news, insanity and stupidity everyone needs something to make them feel better.  Here are ten suggestions guaranteed to help:

  1. Plant something and take care of it; start a garden.
  2. Go for a bicycle ride.
  3. Cook something completely from scratch (and drink wine while you’re doing it).
  4. Do something to help someone, but do it anonymously.
  5. Do #3 and take it to a neighbor.
  6. Take a long weekend and spend it in an expensive hotel.
  7. Go for a hike on a quiet trail, early in the morning (and I mean early!)
  8. Write a letter (on paper with a pen) to a friend.
  9. Close all the windows, all the curtains, and the doors and spend a day doing nothing.  Note: be sure to stock up with your favorite food for this one.
  10. Take a first step towards a long put-off dream.

Do not expect these suggestions to have the expected consequences, but if you delve into them in full guaranteed fulfillment is a certain consequent.

Spring into the Past

dirt

Sometimes we long after times that are gone, things that will not come to pass, and futures that are certain.  But we all know that these things are illusions.  Time passes and we all have different ways of noticing this.  Some of us stare at clocks on the wall or time displays in the corners of our screens.  Some of us count the nights and days, the weeks and perhaps the months.  I used to count time by the summer breaks I had.  It all works.

But time passes no matter what we do and we can only do with time what we decide to do with time; time will pass.  In the past I’ve watched time start with new seedlings and time continue with new plants in the garden.  I’ve watched time pass with the coming cold in the air and with the smell of beer brewing; kale boiling and the smell of canning the summer’s crop.

Those times are past and are yet to come.  Those times cycle through even if we do not notice them.  Sometimes our time is spent in the past, looking out over the horizon that darkens with every waking day.  That does not help.  It does help to think of the possibilities that the future holds.  Perhaps that we people garden.

With a small container and some soil we seed the future; the past seems not to matter.  With water we nourish our hopes; regrets seem forgone.  With soil we reminded that the past is nothing more that possible futures.  It is, after all, where we come from and where we eventually will come to.

The Birth of Dreams

 

beer

Since the dream has died, it is time to make new ones and so it is time to brew beer.  Beer is one of the few possible proofs that there is a god in the universe, but brewing your own beer reminds you that really god is not needed; just clean water.  And so new dreams start again, this time with the help of some well water, yeast, malt and hops.

Brewing beer gives us a break from building other things and gives us a chance to remember what counts: time.  This because brewing beer takes time.  If you are not cleaning, then you are waiting.  The smells waft from the kettles and there is time to dream new dreams.

After Death

life-afte-deathAfter years of living in cities, longing for the country; perhaps some peace and quiet, I look out over twenty two acres of forest and a half acre of tilled earth to become garden next year.

A dream come real is no longer a dream; a reality in the form of work, wood and wonder.  Reality offers it all and reminds us with the birth of reality comes the death of a dream.
Simple needs become clear and concise.  They are many reminding me that a simple life does indeed necessitate complication.  Work is the key word, the kind of work that goes beyond a scotch in the evening listening to music and imagining and composing wishes.
Happiness, the quality of contentedness that so few find is possible, but the road is long, and comparisons begin to take the joy away from the reality.
For those who wish to live their dream do not compare, do not wish for more.  The dream as reality will not be what you think, but it will be life as it is, not as we wish it to be.
The future is still clear, the present is all encompassing and the past is full of memories, if not regrets and happy times.  Perhaps it is age, but most likely it is the realization that a dream come true is the death of the dream.
Self sufficiency has been and will continue to be the goal, it is now only a daily endeavor, a clarity of mind and a soreness of the body.  The dream perhaps lives more clearly now…after death is the life that I have dreamed of.

An Update on the Experiment

experiment

This particular post is two things: an apology and and explanation.

First, an apology.  I realize that blogs are particularly important to those who write them, and less so to those who read them.  That being the case, I must still apologize for not being consistent, if only to myself.

Secondly, an explanation.  I have embarked upon an experiment in self-sustainability that involves moving from one side of this country to the other.  Such a move takes time and effort which explains my apology above.  This experiment involves buying a small (22 acre) plot of land with a house, a barn foundation, and a full woodworking shop.  This is the result of several years of contemplation and contrary thinking that has cost comfort and security, I hope, to a good end: to see just how self-sustaining an individual can be.

To this end I would like to invite anyone interested to visit two new sites that will be up and running this fall.  First, I will have a podcast called “The Philosophy of Gardening” and at some point and time a youtube channel called Trollcastle Works.  These endeavors will simply be a video/audio blog of ongoings around the property that will include forestry work, woodworking and of course gardening.

I hope to have several projects going that include: a small fruit orchard, vegetable garden, furniture making and carpentry, hops and grain fields, and brewing beer.  The podcast and videos, I hope, will be of interest to anyone that might consider self-sustainability as a way of life.

I call this an experiment, because I see 100% self-sustainability as being the speed of light, and the experiment’s goal itself being to see how close to this ideal that I can get.  There will be failures and there will be accomplishments, and I hope to share both.

The reason for this experiment is, of course, personal, but it stems from a belief that self-sustainability for individuals and families is the only moral option.  What better way to test this belief than putting it in practice!

I hope that some of you consider following me on this adventure!

Two-Way Sword

sword

Fear is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it is protective; a gut instinct is helpful in situations where the facts are not clear. We have an evolutionary trait (called an intentional stance) that we carry in our genes that makes assumptions that have proven to save our hides. Fear is a product of that, a consequence of both our genetic makeup and our desire to survive.

However, in the western world this intentional stance does not always serve us well. Often our fear does not help, but hinders us. The issue is for us to determine why we are afraid. At the end of the day, our actions need to be based upon well-informed decisions, but skepticism concerning our actions is a well-tested intentional stance.

Fear serves us well until we becomes slaves to it.

Perhaps our fear comes down to what it is we actually want: to be correct or to be courageous. Alas, the sword cuts two ways again.