The Good Life
And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long -- he has existed long. For what if you should think that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.
Seneca
This quote, like the ideas that follow, attempt to address an issue with a simple solution. I strive to take continuous action towards that solution, but find it far harder than the seeming simplicity would suggest it should be.
I want to live well.
That’s it. It’s a simple proposition that often proves elusive.
Living well, though unique to each, seems to have common threads tying together a tapestry woven by a collective conscience. As best I’m able to tell these threads are iterations on three themes:
Being liked, cared for and considered by others because we like, care for and consider others. (The quantity and quality of our relationships directly correlates with the joy we find in life.)
A strong desire to improve the wellbeing of humanity.
The pursuit of a life that aligns with personal morals and values.
There are ancillary benefits we hope for when pursuing the above 3 — the ability to earn $, to be entertained, to satisfy basic primal needs. The list is endless and entirely dependent on the conditions surrounding an individual’s unique experiences — the problem for me, I find, begins when I give more time to the ancillary benefits than I do the pursuit of living well. I value time outside, time spent with loved ones, time spent getting to know others, time building, writing, reading, thinking or creating, but, fucking Instagram. It just gets in the way. I use the word Instagram here as a euphemism summing up the mass of completely inane shit I find myself doing.
Enter Tiny Escape
As of now, it’s the most significant step taken in a feedback loop that’s pulled me further and further from the insidious creep of Instagram. 20 acres of land on which we can build our dream. It drops us outside with no reprieves save those we build or commission. It forces thought. Planning. Research. Collaboration. Manual labor. It forces time away from screens. Less than two months in and we’ve carved 1000’ of trail, built multiple level pads (they’re small), planned future structures and the corresponding experiences we’d like to create alongside those structures.
It forces thought. Planning. Research. Collaboration. Manual labor. It forces time away from screens. Less than two months in and we’ve carved 1000’ of trail, built multiple level pads (they’re small), planned future structures and the corresponding experiences we’d like to create alongside those structures.
I’ve taken up welding (thanks to my dad and brother for the welder), find myself writing more than ever and, generally, spending time doing things I care about a bit more.
I’ll continue to use Instagram. Watch YouTube. Spend hours/week with Netflix. But, I hope that the time spent doing these things will trend towards a place of consciousness as opposed to being a default. Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and watch a great movie. Scroll through my feed. Watch 5 consecutive Stephen Colbert clips on YouTube. How nice it would be if they acted more as icing on the cake of a life well lived rather than as life itself. There’s a long way to go, both with the land and with aligning my actions with personal values, but, I’m movin’.
Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.
Seneca
