Saturday, September 18, 2004

Destiny

Since we moved out here more than a decade ago, one or the other of us has always had some job in town. We’ve managed to always keep it part-time. Husband has always been self-employed but he’s had one contract at one place for a good part of the time we’ve been here and so that has seemed like a job. It is about to come to an end.

At the same time, several of our good friends are moving away, looking for greener pastures on the other side of the fence themselves. It would seem to be a time of huge cosmic changes for just about all who touch us, all that touches us. Our wish would be that the movement for us and for all is going somewhere, has vision and ideal behind and before it; is not a distraction from what we do not wish to examine and change.*

Life without vision is drudgery
Vision without action is but an empty dream
Action guided by vision is destiny.

Financially, we’ve worked on “littling along”, a phrase coined by Harlan Hubbard in Payne Hollow, for some time and will embark on it in earnest now.

Another in-earnest-ness is the food. We’ve always played with growing “enough potatoes to feed us if we had nothing else”, “enough hard corn for all our bread”, enough beans, enough everything. But this year coming, which means this harvest going on right now, the preservation we’re doing right now and did earlier this year, that’s it. Will it see us through? Are we clever enough, resourceful enough, hard enough?

I stopped at an office to pay a business bill the other day and we spoke about the coming loss of employment. She asked the question, “What will he do? Will he have to move?” I laughed and said, before I even thought, “Oh, we don’t need money.” It is a joke but it is not a joke. It is our ideal. Destiny is upon us.

If the Buddhists are right and all suffering is rooted in desire, it would seem that you can either try to get what you want, or you can want far less. The really ironic thing is that less is more. Always and all ways.

*footnote: ok, so we’re pretty sure of our vision and our ideals. and you?

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