a civilized life
Civilization is only a series of victories against nature ~ William Harvey
If we allow it, a civilized life will swallow us whole. Our precious minutes will be engulfed by society’s tenacious tendrils, with any further minutes absorbed by thinking, planning + worrying for a future which hasn’t even happened upon us yet. Left, right, left, right. Into the matrix we go. We are sold a tantalising illusion of convenience, comfort + control by those who (surprise, surprise) profit from it. But the longer we wander inside the maze, we start to smell a rat. We get the sinking feeling that a search for a cushy life is in fact, an endless one. And that the best things in life are, as they tell us, free.
In our very competent ability to do, it seems that many of us have forgotten how to be. How to be still. How to be slow. How to be gentle. How to be with discomfort. How to be with our flaws and how to be with our greatness. How to be absolutely nothing but who we genuinely are.
Collectively, we are depleted + overwhelmed, with no one yet assigned to turn the pressure cooker off. While we wait for that, the word ‘busy’ is gaining traction. For many, ‘busy’ indicates success, abundance, being useful. When someone asks how we are, we often believe a valid response is ‘busy’. But busy has zero to do with how we are. And in my opinion, being busy sucks. When I am busy, I am disconnected, uncomfortable and not present. I am desirous to return to nature, to my family and to myself. Busy is a place I want to get the fuck out of.
Busy is however sometimes necessary. We have kids. We have work. We have commitments. And let’s face it, humans do busy well. We are efficient + productive. Big ants with financial incentives. But in the gaps of our busy-ness, where we should be leaning into quietude + reprieve in order to replenish ourselves…. are we sure we are not perpetuating a cycle of busy with technology, socialising + entertainment?
As a child, I remember long stretches of silence and space. It was infuriating and boring. However, it was also where my ideas, creativity + connection to nature came to life. It was a place to disengage from life’s structure, rules + ideals. A place where just being was not only enough… it was fecund ground where I could grow and become.
Chapters of nothingness are necessary for creativity and growth to occur.
The antidote to busy is when we remember who we are + why we are here. Our arrival earthside is in itself, a miracle. We are not merely custodians of the earth, but a deeply woven part of its fabric.
The call of comfort + convenience bellows at us from all angles. Clever algorithms and clever marketing beg us to pick up our phones, to constantly check our notifications/emails/appearance, and remain updated on all the latest shit, regardless of the detriment to ourselves and nature.
It is not the role of the machine to wane our collective want, because it profits enormously from it. And so, it is left up to us: to discern the wants from needs, make the small or big changes that we can, and to take a closer look at who really has our best interests at heart. This year, we learned who our people are when shit hits the fan. It is our community, family and friends who show up in the height of a pandemic, flood, fire, death, or tragedy with seedlings, toilet paper, flowers, hugs, and time. When structures, systems + economies crumbled around us, when our business went down when governments squabbled and when everything got cancelled - they were the ones who grabbed a bucket and started helping us to clean the shit from the fan.
A mouse is extremely efficient at keeping a wheel turning. But a mouse running on a wheel will not come up with any new ideas – he’ll just run until he drops. Besides, mice were not created to just run on a wheel because like all species, they have a natural order: they are born, cared for, run free in the wild, evade (or don’t evade) predators, learn their place in the natural world, mate, reproduce + marvel at the wonders of the nature and then, they die. And when they die, their bones and flesh are drawn back into earth again which in turn feed the plants that will sustain the next generation.
We are eyeball deep in tumult right now, but what if all this is preparing us for a deeper connection to life than the one we have been settling for? What if we are reaching towards a greater magic, where we value natural order over systems + control? And what if, instead of doing so much, we leaned more into the potency of our being?
Perhaps the next chapter will be a connected life.
❤️