I’d rather be busking

People are always talking about “getting serious.” What is there to get? Serious is a way of life for me. Andreas told me to ask Jermaine Jackson.

Recently, as I was negotiating whether or not to stay at my day job, someone asked me if I was making enough to survive on as a freelancer. I said, “I’m used to being poor.” This answer was met with a laugh and the beginning of the “It doesn’t have to be that way” talk that far too many people give one another without knowing the other person’s history, politics, heart. I cut him off. “I’d rather be poor and happy,” I explained. I was then told that condos in the city are going for cheap – a million and a half kroner! I smiled. “Cheap is relative. I don’t have a million of anything.” I left – the office, but also the job – before I could be told that capitalism will save me. It will not. Poverty is not liberation, but knowledge and happiness are.

Treat your discomfort not as something to be cured or eradicated, but as a sign of your dissatisfaction with your own current life, and a sign that you are being called to a new and deeper relationship with the world. [source]

I recently gained a new client who, after realizing how much I enjoy pet sitting, suggested I connect with other expats to expand my business. “Maybe you could hook up with one the ladies’ clubs,” she offered helpfully. Only when she brought it up a second time did I have the heart to be honest. “They don’t really like me,” I began. She looked a little horrified so I quickly continued. “I’m a little too young and a little too radical for them.” She looked me up and down for a telltale sign of the progressive in her home. I offered, “I don’t really ‘lunch,’” implying that lunch was a verb. She smiled. “I don’t either.”

In an ideal world your family and culture would recognize that it’s time for you to wander and you would be celebrated and brought to the gates of the city and bid farewell for a time. But it’s likely that your culture is the same highly technical, scientifically and industrially organized culture that I grew up in and that most of our readers grew up in, in which such necessary mysteries of life as the wandering of youth are ignored or tamped down. [source]

After a long weekend of dog walks, cat belly rubs, and bunny snuggling, I came out with the following injuries: a pinched nerve connecting my tailbone and left leg, two enormous black and yellow bruises on my legs, several scratches on my face, a bloody cut on one finger, a long red welt on my left palm from closing my hand in a door, and generalized soreness. The physical pain is no match for the discomfort feeling chained to a desk. In fact, I sleep more soundly, snack less between meals, have more energy, and experience fewer headaches that are also curable with a simple bike ride. No need to pop pills when you can breathe fresh air while winding along the beach or navigating suburban streets where companion animals rely on your presence, your love.

Even burning my hand on the oven tonight was bittersweet. While my blistering wound of the second degree will require a call to my rather adorable doctor in the morning – admittedly no trouble since she’s very sweet – I kept thinking, “But I was cooking.” Hard to have a happy accident when you aren’t skilled in the art of feeding yourself, you know? I spent the hour+ with my hand under the faucet talking to my grandparents and reading. Time is only a waste if you are.

You are being asked to live a meaningless life, and when you have trouble adjusting to this meaningless life, they give you pills to make the symptoms go away. [source]

When we were visiting Poplar Spring sanctuary last spring, one of the caretakers mentioned that he used to get migraines like mine. “Used to?” I asked. “Ever since I started working here, they’ve vanished,” he explained. This simple exchange has stuck with me all year. Why don’t more folks make healthy choices? The evidence in favor of personal health and satisfaction is striking.