Rambling Thoughts, Part One.

I have a dream.

This dream does not involve expensive, fancy cars.  It does not involve a house full of innovative, life-altering gadgets and appliances.  It does not involve a corporate career which brings a six-figure income.  I really don't care about a six-figure income.  But let's be honest here...without a college degree (of which I also don't have a dream of obtaining), and the motivation to plant my ass in a chair, surrounded by dreary, grey cubicle walls all day, shuffling the remains of dead trees around, there will be no six-figure income in any decade of my life.  Unless I actually finish one of my books and it becomes a best-seller and someone decides to make a movie about it.  I was a stand-in for Elizabeth Moss once, maybe she could play me?  Though Kristen Bell a la Veronica Mars is more my thought (Kristen, if you're reading this, keep your calendar open in five or ten years).

As usual, I digress.  Back to that dream.

I don't know that it's a dream, or more along the lines of my truth calling for me, while I continue to push it aside; a cog in this ever-growing machine that we, as a culture, have created since the day we stole this beautiful land from the people who were living in synchronicity with it.  Further proof of how I don't fit in with it all, I don't really agree that things were so much harder back then.  The only way things were harder was in the physical work that people actually had to do.  And it probably wasn't nearly as hard for people then because they just did it.  They had to do it or they would starve, and it's proven and documented and researched thoroughly that physical activity is actually good for you.  What?  Yeah, really.  

Not just physical activity, but more continual movement, with accomplishments.  Like growing food and plant medicine, the things that sustain and nourish, without having to walk into a store for it.  Creating life.  How beautiful is that and why don't more people want to do these things?  I have a hard time understanding why we have chosen to become a society of paper-pushing drones, slaving away for other people as we come home exhausted unable to sleep well, never getting enough time with our families. All so we can make enough money to pay others to cook our meals, clean our houses, raise our kids, deliver our groceries, mow our lawns, and the list goes on.  

I love mowing my lawn.  For real.  And I have about six acres total to mow.  Around trees, bushes, up and down hills.  But I also love doing dishes, by hand (yes, I could totally hear you gasp!).  And I just hung another load of laundry to dry.  I've not even owned an electric clothes dryer for about five years. Even with two very active boys, I survive, and can't even complain about that.  There are plenty of other things I could complain about, but hanging my clothes to dry or doing dishes by hand are not among those things.  They have, conversely, become meditative processes for me.

Every day I ask myself why I don't just step away from this soul-sucking grid already?  And every time I lose another person I love to some stupid fucking tragedy it becomes more apparent how much of my time I'm wasting keeping the machine greased and rolling.  Is this what I'm meant to do in life?  Pay taxes and die?  Buy all the things?  Be a good little consumer?  Feed the greedy fucking monster? 

No.

I struggle having these discussions with my children.  I want them to be successful in life, but I also want them to live lives that have meaning.  I want them to be able to support themselves and their (eventual) families while doing something that truly makes a difference in this world.  To do something that matters.  Something that brings them joy and a sense of accomplishment.  I want my children to find a life purpose that they will never want to retire from.  Rather than just finding the career that they can make a decent living with, I want them to choose what they want to do and make THAT work for them.

This is where I try not to wish I hadn't drank the majority of my twenties away thinking of all the other things I could have been doing with that time, like traveling and writing.  And where would I be now if I had taken a different path?  Oh I know, this is a rabbit hole I'm not going to go down for this post.  Another time, perhaps.

But every day I find myself trying to fit myself into this box when I would have to remove entire pieces of myself to do so.  There is always the "well, it's just the way it is, you have to play the game.  It's just how society has become and we don't really  have a choice. We have to make money." But no, there is always a choice.

What do I really want?  I want to walk the earth (and write about it).  I want to memorize the landscapes and feel the thousands of miles of wooded forests and sandy deserts beneath my feet (and write about it).  I want to become intimate with her hills and valleys, feeling her energy rush into my body through my feet bare on its' surface (and write about it). To swim in the oceans and bathe in the rivers, and truly be a part of that which sustains me (and write about it).  I want to plant my own food, and make my own medicinals, to feed myself from the life that is all around me (and write about it).  I want to live with purpose and meaning, and write about it so that others are encouraged to find their own purpose and meaning. I want a life that flows with the seasons and the phases of the moon, filling my land with the life that is meant to sustain us, because that is what my soul wants to do.  I'm fairly confident that my soul was not put in this body to suffocate under the blacktop of society and waste away in an office chair.

God doesn't want me to hold up a machine that rapes the Earth and fills it with filth and pollution.

We are so far removed from ourselves.  And try as I might, I'm not finding a way for there to be a balance.  If I'm part of the machine, if I contribute to all the things I don't believe in, I'm living a lie.

Anyone know when the train to Walnut Grove leaves?