Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Materialism Or Freedom? We Do Have A Choice

At the government office where my brother works a number of 2-year employment-contracts are now ending (so people are getting their walking papers). In regards to my spouse’s career – many automobile dealerships received notice last week that their contracts with the manufacturer are not being renewed. That means many of the dealerships (where my husband’s mechanic-friends work) are now closing down.

Even those technicians who remain employed are earning less and less money per car repair job as dealerships take more of the mechanic's wages to turn a profit. When my spouse complains about getting paid less, I ask him: “Ya wanna just sell everything and hit the road? We could live like gypsies! We don’t HAVE to buy into the bullsh#%&* of working for slave wages. We could live off the interest of our mortgage and just be FREE; live off the land!"

I strongly feel if someone is unhappy at work they can definitely make decisions to live a different sort of lifestyle; like become a beach bum or something. My spouse and I can definitely live out of a Winnebago or something! So that's what I tell my Doug: "You have the option to quit when work feels too burdensome."


Doug says: “YOU would like that, and you might be happy eating weeds, but I wouldn’t.”

In truth. I love my home. I love gardening and raising back yard chickens. At the same time, I would also take it as a welcomed life challenge to pursue a different sort of lifestyle [to make it work].

I’m actually gorging on a book called “Eat the Weeds” right now. (It's a really old copy that I purchased at an estate sale for $1.) It claims that regular lawn provides more vitamins, minerals and other nutrients than three times its weight in vegetables and fruits. The idea is to cut, wash and then dehydrate the blades of grass. Once dry, you grind it into a powder and add it to whatever you’re baking or cooking: muffins, pancakes, hot cereal, soups, etc. According to calculations, doing such regularly would decrease the grocery bill by 25% and dramatically improve on the family’s health.


I think its funny how people I talk to have such an aversion to the idea of eating their lawn; especially since they’re willing to eat corn (a grass) and wheat (a grass) and so many other type of cereals made from grass-species. Not only that: but how many people do you know who SMOKE "grass" and listen to Blue Grass? (Why not eat the lawn???)

Note: eating the lawn would NOT be a good idea if you ever use pesticides or weed killer in your yard. Doing such would simply poison the family; just as all the insects, bats, birds, etc., all get poisoned when pesticides are used.

Remember that tsunami that struck India a couple of years ago? I was so impressed by the water gypsies who took to higher ground just before the devastation hit. Those people were paying attention to Earth's rhythms. They don't own anything besides their boats and cooking tools. When they want breakfast, they collect it from the sea or from land. They don't worry about retirement funds or medical insurance. Doing such is a life choice we Americans tend to make.

There's a certain romance to living life more connected to nature. Maybe it's time: to take control of our own destiny. To realize we enslave ourselves by the choices for materialism we make (and perhaps begin to choose otherwise).

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I wish I could do that, but I think the uncertainty would drive me to anxiety and the anxiety might kill me. Instead, I'll just spend a lot of free time with nature.

Arawn Graalrd said...

Those Water Gypsies do pay attention to Retirement and Health Insurance, but their traditions and wisdoms are shared across the generations of the tribes, rather than deing duly recorded and neglected, that public schools may decide what's to be known.

Church is a word that isn't broadly understood, but recommends a second power of Three. Solomon says, " Two can go farther than One for, if one should stumble, the Other can help him up, but a cord of three strands is not easily cut." Such is the first power of three, and it's good to have two or three friends who've been through, when you challenge a Mystery. The word Church, though, is closer to the Chinese Three, which numeral has three horizontal bars, The top bar is Heaven, the bottom bar is Earth, and the middle bar is Life or Man. The word Church is connected to the latin Quercus, meaning Oak, which has Roots in the Earth and Branches in Heaven. I'd like to share the Holy Grail with you, when you get out East, but I'm trying to convince the Cof$ to use the Hand Clapping Game, which they tend to think of as a children's game. You want some circle for the study of shared control, that those who struggle to help others can learn from their experience, and these are stirring cauldrons. Cauldron Stir and Cauldron Boil, Cauldron Bubble and Cauldron Toil, the Rit of Sangraal can be profitably followed by a Quaker style of "Sharing the attitude of waiting on God," but this package is also an able chaser for any practice of group leadership.

Alianna mentions a dependance on her middle class servitude, and her hopes that a sabbath will suffice; Sabbath is the yoga of Moses, and the six days of labor potentiate the "Day of Rest." Day of Rest means Rest, rather than Enslavement unto Worship, and taking a breath in Nature might be the thing that pleaseth the heart. Learning to Swim could offer lessons in this, where you make an effort to procede, and then take a breath, as to celebrate the Yin and the Yang.

Loading a Lawn Bakery unto a Goat Cart, and teaching some sort of Stirring Cauldron, might not be a bad retirement.

Arawn Graalrd

Fijufic said...

I often dream of moving somewhere else and living by my wits.

I would like a vacation like you describe honestly. Hell, I'll eat weeds if I can figure them out.

Bobby

SunTiger said...

Alianna ~ Anxiety about what? The idea that the sun will not come up tomorrow? Fear that the plants will not produce? {This fear you mention has been SOCIALIZED into our psyche. I totally understand it. At the same time, I personally want to know where my fear comes from so I can address and conquer it.}

Arawn ~ What you report in regards to tribal healthcare has nothing to do with the common interpretation of what "insurance" means. They eat healthier so tend not to die from clogged arteries, etc.

Fijufic ~ This is the one thing I've been learning from the Native Plant Society that I adore so much (learning how the Native Americans used what plants for food). Wayyy too awesome!

Arawn Graalrd said...

What is insurance? If we trust in our Health Care System, and pay them in advance, they will be there, to help us along, when it's our time to die, unless the money runs out, and the remedy for our current downturn is going to involve steep inflation, if there's that much hope. Where a tribe allows children to care for the elderly, in accordance with available medical wisdom, then you have a system.

In anticipation of finding the current incarnation of Charles Dickens, I've been reading from his Pickwick Papers, and have reached the Madman's Manuscript. I think I may have run into the author, in Second Life. Those guys really remind me of a Paranormal Research Group I used to study.

Socialism offers us solutions to many problems, but each problem offers us an opportunity for Wisdom.

Arawn Graalrd

Hibiscus Moon said...

Very intersting indeed and I respect anyone who chooses to do that. Its trade offs that we make. I would like to leave it for a while, but I do know that I would miss it.

BTW, the animals paid attention right along w/ the water gypsies and protected themselves...another trade off the modern world retirement insurance obsessed human has made...we've lost the ability to tune in.

SunTiger said...

Hibiscus Moon ~
EXACTLY. And then we have Arawn's comments about insurance . . . as though people somehow need to be "helped" in the dying process. As though birth and death were something we could do together {Animals need no help in birthing or dying, why do we assume that's a need of ours? Why do we no longer go off to a distant cave somewhere to kick the bucket/I sometimes wonder.}

I hope I'm able to keep my resolve for self-care the older I get.

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