There is a distinctive memory from my childhood that comes around, especially on days like today when I feel more edgy and triggered than usual.
I am this 8 or 9-year-old girl, skinny and sun-kissed, who dangles herself on a whirring swing, under a full Moon night.
Some other giggly kid must have asked because I hear myself saying in a loud, thrilled voice: Tomorrow is Saturday and we will all be going to visit grandmas‘
The passing time may have distorted the accuracy of this moment but one thing I remember vividly is the freedom and exalt of heading to the woods the following morning. It was as if a warm glow covered me up and while gazing at the Moon, I thought to myself just how lucky I am to have something that misses from me profoundly.
Now, grandma – even if not the most idyllic character I’ve loved – was the spotlight in all my school breaks and she had wrapped around her an astonishing scenery: a 100-year-old, yellow-painted cottage house with a hand-carved porch, an orchard of mirabelle and plum trees, loads of nosy ducklings, fresh well water and a hanged vineyard that sheltered our daily play in its textured shade.
Nearly all my childhood memories have a corner of an old cottage house in them. Modest and lively colored, with burnt wood and fresh linen smell, hand-sewn embroidery that hangs in one place or another.
Every moment of our life, we may just have everything we need, but we would discover that only when all is long gone. We are too busy to rush towards a future moment.
While humanity’s accomplishments are countless, I can not help but feel there is something that went terribly wrong in this social design.
Something has been missing from me and many others that I know, and it’s sure not only “time”.
I am tired but not in the way my parents were tired when they came from their middle-class paying jobs. I am rather stretched and pulled and I am taking vit. D for lack of sun exposure. And I run after temporarily satisfying things.
I pay with my life for pure clutter and even if I have had times when I scrolled through the most Pinterestial mansions and I pictured myself sipping tea over a 25000 sq ft yard, I can not help but wonder sometimes:
Why? Why on Earth would we voluntarily work ourselves like donkeys for commodities?
Shouldn’t one stop hunting when enough sustenance goods have been hoarded?
When should one end its greed is a subjective matter, they answer, but considering the disaster that we leave behind and the wrecks we can become, I would say it’s a global issue. Anyone’s today selfish needs will become someone’s tax to pay in the future.
And we’re not even happy!
What I am clumsily trying to paint here is the easiness we found in trading a meaningful, sunrise-watching, grass-scented life, for an automated lifestyle with perks like getting things done faster but not necessarily better.
While I do enjoy the benefits of the modern world I can not not miss the old-fashioned days, when people seemed to bond easily and recognized their need to belong to each other.
Some called these thoughts of mine a seasonal outburst but I am sure that I am not the only one who imagines a fusioned life, filled with substance and meaning.
A life where one can wake up to the sunrise and meet the grass and shake oneself up from the night spirits without rushing out the door.
I dream of freedom. Not only the freedom to move easily in such an enormous world but the freedom to just BE and not feel guilty for it.