A simple life
So, recently I have been walking.
Previously I used to run along side the river every morning but I realized it hurt my joints. So, I decided to walk instead.
Now I walk in the evenings (and sometimes mornings). It feels great!
Village
So, as I was walking today, I came across a really cool place. It was like a village, with rows and rows of fields and a few shabby looking houses. And since it is spring time, there were lines of flowers all along the path I was walking. It was beautiful.
Now that the scene had sparked my curiosity, I took a deeper look at it. The fields were half full and half empty; some of the land was barren and the other half was full of rice (I presume). There were these old ladies working on the field, ploughing the land with their tiny tools. And then I shifted my attention to the houses. To be honest, calling them houses would be an over statement. They were like roughly put together shelters (kinda like a toy house a child plays with) with roofs made up of thin metal, and walls plastered with god knows what. There were bicycle tires on the roof alongside a few pumpkins. There were chicken running everywhere around the houses, and a few suspicious eyes were directly looking at me, thinking “Who is this funny looking dude, looking at us so intensely?”
The kids.
Ah yes, the kids. The suspicious eyes belonged to a group of few kids. All shabby looking just like the houses they live in. The smaller ones even had nasty stuff dripping from their noses. They wore the simplest of clothes (most of it kinda dirty), and to be honest, I thought they were kinda dumb by the way they looked.
Anyways, I had somewhere to go, so I left the shabby looking kids and their shabby looking houses, with their (possibly) shabby looking business (maybe they were going to paly with the chickens, who knows?) And I continued my walk.
But as I was leaving the beautiful village behind, I felt something.
I felt that even though the village was (as you already know) shabby looking, it still felt like a good place to live in. I thought, it would be so cool to live in one of those shabby looking houses, with those kids, playing with chicken all day long.
A simple life.
WHY?
One might ask, considering my description of the village that one would ever want to live in such a place.
Here is WHY.
Yes, it is true that the place was very shabby looking indeed, with tin houses and dirty kids with suspicious eyes. With bicycle tires on the roof and chicken running around, it was definitely not the most ideal place to live in. True.
But, along side my less than alluring description of the place, my description also had never ending rows of rice fields, beautiful flowers and hard-working old ladies in it. It had fresh air, no annoying cars honking around, clean water and good food in it too. You just had to look deeper.
And most importantly, it had what I call:
A SIMPLE LIFE
Yes, the simple life. The people in those shabby looking houses, lived off the land. Their lives are far simpler than mine. Now, granted that my life is far easier than theirs (I don’t have to spend my days working the fields, nor do I have to go outside my house to take a shit). But I think a simple life wins over an easy life.
I can tell you from my personal experience, an easy life is not necessarily a happy life.
The old ladies were working the fields with a sense of calm on their faces. They were (possibly) talking about their husbands, or their kids, or maybe their chickens (who knows?) but they were at least talking. They had a sense of direction in their lives. They knew what they had to do that day: they had to work the fields, because it’s where they get their food from. Simple, isn’t it?
They had a sense of community. They had a sense of direction.
Things… things I wish I had.
True, they don’t have attached bathrooms, or computers (but that also means, they don’t have to deal with the bullshit that comes with having attached bathrooms or computers). They don’t have to worry about your flush not working, or your next online meeting.
Life is simple. Life is good.
The children don’t have to think too much about what they want to become when they grow up (a question that used to keep me up at night lol), they already know. Their great-grandfather had worked the land, their grandfather had worked the land, their father is working the land, and so, just as a crow births a crow, they will also work the same land. There is nothing to think about. It’s all there. No restless nights, no big questions to answer, no terrifying life decisions to make, it all SIMPLE in their lives.
Ah! How peaceful.
They are born with an identity, while I have to work so hard, every single day to make one for myself.
It’s too much work lol.
CONCLUSION
So, there you have it, a simple life is a good life. Hence, we might consider living with a little less, and actually living a little more.
But first, who wants to watch the latest season of Game of Thrones?
Cheers!
= )
Honestblogs 