lifestyle

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.

Boredom

Much of the work done when we care becomes tedious and it is at these times that we notice, that we begin to think that what we do does not matter.  That is a mistake.  All things, all jobs, all activities are tedious when we delve into them in depth.  That is the nature of being in depth, of understanding the nature of doing things.

The tediousness does not keep our little voice busy; it does not keep our egos at bay;  tediousness is boredom with a different name.  Only that when we do something indepth we cannot afford boredom.  That is the secret of success and perhaps even contentedness: to realize that all things are tedious at some level.  Tediousness is not the problem, it is our attitude towards it that is.

First, to be content we must be motivated by something other than profit.  We must be motivated by the virtue of tediousness, the acceptance of boredom.  In order to do this we do lose something: our ego, our un-admitted reliance upon what others think.  We all care, but perhaps simply about the wrong things.

To enjoy the boredom in our lives is a learned character trait.  We dismiss this this simple possibility at our own peril.

Simple

Work is not complicated.  Today is not complicated.  We simply must do what must be done.  The morning was started with the dog and evolved to some carpentry.  The sun out, became more beautiful as the day slowly grew.  The wood cut, and lunch.

Out came the chicks; the sun would do them good.  Enjoying the sunny day the chicks played and slept, ate and drank.  Simple times; simple life.

The afternoon started slowly, the tractor in place and the chipper hooked up.  The brush awaited.  The chipper started and the chipping began.  One pile, and then another.  Almost Buddhist in its meditation: the brush goes in and chips come out.

The chips themselves simple in their creation.  They will start as hen house bedding, and the compost and then on into the garden to start the cycle again.  One day growing a tree that will be cut and used, even to its smallest branches.

The piles of chips, sitting in the sunshine, and a shovel.  The old trailer brought to life but first the hitch attached to the tractor.  The work is hard and the day is beautiful: both simple in their very nature.

The trailer full of chips and the stored for the winter.  The day is simple; work is not complicated.  As it should be; as it should be.

 

Speed Limits

 

For the last ten days I’ve been motorcycling around the Northeast and the Midwest.  Through the rolling mountains of New York, the Catskills and the Allegheny mountains touted small towns, luscious forests and hidden restaurant gems that serve farm-to-table foods together with local brews.

The Allegheny mountains through Pennsylvania seemed more rough and rowdy than the somewhat civilized backwoods of New York, but they too served up ready brews and food from local farmers.  The stars of the trip, no doubt, but the winding road through West Virginia and the amazing nature that goes along with such twisting scenery soothes the soul, even at 65 mph around 35 mph corners.

The Midwest’s flat lands were a welcomed respite from from the work of the winding roads that flattened out in Ohio, Indiana and Missouri.  The food changed too.  Now the long single-lane roads were dotted with small towns and more fast-food.  The roads were beautiful in themselves and offered thoughts that were often recited out loud in the helmet while the wind whistled constantly.

I love motorcycles because they allow the riders willing to search an experience that is lost on those that scale the highways in their air-conditioned automobiles.  The experience is sensory in all its forms: from the smells to the tastes of coming rains.  The motorcyclist recognizes the differences between the small back roads and the long reigning highways.

The small roads offer smells of pine and forest, of food and farms, of the dank and dusky smells of animal life to the warm and inviting smells of people cooking for others.  The highways offer time but at a price: the experiences are limited to oil in fryers to oil at the gas stations.  Everything is fast, from the food to the freeways.

I have lived on the highways for long enough, but the small back roads take getting used to.  Perhaps I will slow those corners to their posted speed limits one day.motorcycles

The Sun Goes Down

A new place; a new beginning. Pulling the old, familiar tools out again I go to work. Things are the same, but yet (as people always seem to say) they are the same. The smells that make up a home coat this house, but they are unfamiliar as they always are. At first, not knowing where to begin, I begin; and the day goes. The sun comes up.

I throw old memories down the staircase knowing that at one time they were important. They aren’t mine, but I feel for them nevertheless. Almost as if time as stopped I pause at a few, looking at them and understanding that there is a time for everything and an end to everything as well. The house is full of these memories; some are good, and some are just…memories.

The wood stove warms up the place and it comes to life. The house was never dead as some that I have known were near. It is a heavy feeling to work in a near-dead house. This one is tired, it is worn out but friendly. Silent, but thankful. Years go by in an hour. Days go by in a minute. I put another slice of wood in the stove and the cinammon smell of dried oak and pine fill the room.

The house is patient with me as I go about my chores. I leave for while to start a tractor, to make plans, to pick up wood, to have coffee, but I come back and start again. Each time I walk into the house the musty smell of smoke, incense, wood and beer fill my nose. It is not a bad smell, not a good smell; it is the smell of years of life, of existence, of survival, of talks and fights.  It is not my life, but somehow it is all of our lives. Human life is messy and the house as experienced all that people can give it.

And now, like me, it begins a new adventure. I almost see it smile as a close the door as the sun goes slowly down behind the trees.

MISTAKES, MISGIVINGS, AND MOTIVATIONS: III

face roadmap

As he realized, there was no explanation and searching for answers to the puzzle that the past posed, he found none.  With the past in his pocket, there was only the unknown, the future left to pack.  And as he folded and flipped the future a new realization dawned: it was not his own.

“The future is not ours…”, he thought out loud.  “The future belongs to no one; it is, in fact, nothing.”  As the thought settled in his head he reached for another piece to pack and found that there was always something to put into his bag, into his pocket to become the tear-soaked past.

“Something out of nothing is the truth; finally!  The Truth!!”

And what of meaning and these dangerous days of wonder and worry.  There will come more mistakes and more misgivings, but of what?  And about what?  If the future is truly nothing, than we are left with the pocket full of past and the present that we cannot notice.  Are we truly slaves to the limits of time or are we burdened with the freedom of space?

Philosophical nonsense made meaningless by poetry and prose, by literature and leitmotifs.  And as these thoughts ran through his head, the responsibilities that he had once believed he had had continued to create something that was never his.  Picking up his empty bag and feeling the weight in his pocket, he turned to go.

The Unattainable 

Looking at a mountain and slowly crawling up its magnificient facade by eye; the peak, so far up, and smiling down, from its precipice in the sky; seems to smile and smirk as if to say there is no way you will come to me.
And as you ready yourself, taking long breaths and feeling the tingle in your gut; you busy yourself with tools and toys and thoughts of what you must; the answer, you realize and come to know, is in your thoughts and not what you see.

 
The journey begins one step at a time, one foot, one stone, one rock; you begin the climb and see the sights that the trees down below have blocked; the climb is steep and the rocks are loose and the peak continues to smile.
The days go by, the tiredness heavy, and newness has worn off; your muscles sore, and so alone but the voices in your head they scoff; the morning comes and the pain is fierce, but ahead mile after mile, after mile.

 
Until one day, all hope is gone, the peak it snears and screams; the pain is numb, the cold is deep, and misery is in your dreams; you walk again, your bones are brittle, your desire is all but erased.
Dumb and blind, careless and lost, your adventure is no more; no more pain can cause you harm, there is no voice to implore; but at the top, you’ve made your goal! And now a smile comes across your face.

 
At the peak you sit and eat, and hope and power you feel; the sun shines down and the rocks are warm, your fate it has been sealed; you have conquered your fear and made better your life; explained the unexplainable.
Looking down, the trail is known, and the miles they melt away; you’ve not met your match, you’ve accomplished much no matter what others say; all are proven wrong, and you are honestly proud to have attained the unattainable.

It’s Just a Feeling

There is a place for that feeling that we get, our gut feeling, without explanation, about places, people, and decisions.  Sometimes that feeling is a warm and tingly sensation in the stomach and sometimes that feeling is a knot.  Somehow (it seems) our body is reacting to thoughts that we might not realize that we have; somehow are emotion is a road sign to an unknown understanding.

Perhaps this unconscious intelligence has just been blinded by a society that is motivated not by curiosity but by consumerism?  Maybe it takes time to realize, to listen, that how we feel is sometimes linked to what we do.  David Hume famously stated that reason is the slave of the passions.

Do not get me wrong: logical reasoning and rationale must be the foundation; we cannot lie to ourselves and equate our emotions with intelligence.  However, we are human and we must accept the bastard child, emotion.  Reigned in and controlled it will steer us toward what we truly want, ironically.

Think about it: the dreams that we pursue are not rational when we envision them but must be rationally pursued to make them a reality.  So, it seems, that we have a choice: 1) to sleep and perchance to dream, or 2) To dream and perchance to act.  It’s just a feeling after all, but feelings count when we choose to listen carefully.

 

More is Not Better

Give Me Give Me MORE | sweatglow

There’s a lesson to be learned in the idea that more is better.  First, this is an idea that has proven itself time and time again false, and yet as a society, as individuals, and as a race we continually strive for more.

More is larger, more is better; we need more and we desire more!  In fact, our society has based the concept of progress on the idea of more.  Oddly enough, it seems that intuitively we know that this is not correct; it is not right.  But we continue on.

Our current president has made a name for himself by believing, or at least selling the belief, that more is better.  The idea clearly does not work.  More seems to undermine better; quantity does not equal quality.  Rhetoric does not equal intelligence.

To move forward the concept of value needs to be redefined: both what we value and why we value it.  A self-sufficient lifestyle will do wonders in redefining what is important.  In fact, the whole concept of self-sufficiency is better because it allows us to redefine value based upon need alone.

No longer is money the measure of value; no longer can we confuse desire with need.  No longer can we continually accept that more is better.  To be self-sufficient is not simply to feed, heat and shelter yourself.  No, to be self-sufficient one must THINK for one’s self.  More thinking does not equal better thinking.  More production does not equal better products.

We can no longer define what we value with quantity.  So, what do we do?  One good starting point might be to start with less: buy less, think better about those few things that are actually important, and produce quality rather than depend upon quantity.  Perhaps we will find that more is worthy only of less thought, and less importance.

 

Here’s Knowing You!

Pork and Belly 2

 

It was a good day yesterday. Pork and Belly, our pigs, are hanging in the garage and the job of butchery begins tomorrow. We have four sides to get through and the process will be a learning situation. The process of raising, slaughtering and butchering your own meat is (as the words used to describe the process) a somewhat violent process towards the end but I choose to broaden my perspective and see the beauty in the cycle of life.

Pork and Belly were happy right up to the end. Sniffing at the barrel of the pistol that was about to end his life, Pork was at ease and full of trust; never stressed and never felt a thing. As I took a minute or two to calm my nerves, holding the pistol and watched as he poked at it innocently. I describe this not to disgust or dismay, but to remind us all (including me) that death is not the important thing: life is.

While it is true that Pork and Belly trusted me and I broke that trust, it is also true that I built that trust by giving them the best life that I could. Their life was full of rutting around, eating acorns, pats and scratches and a warm bed of hay every night. There lives were good by any standard and it is that life that I am proud of.

This is a process that I believe is necessary if we insist upon eating meat. It affords us the understanding that by eating we take something of great value, something that we must come to appreciate as we cannot bring it back: a living, breathing, and thinking entity. I do not thank a god or gods for their lives. I am thankful that I have been given the chance to look at life straight in the eye; all the blood and beauty of it. It only gives me a greater appreciation of the food that I eat, and the animals’ lives that I take in order to do just that.

Raise a glass with me to Pork and Belly
Good pigs they were, and good food they are!