In the evening (or anytime, really) take a kettle and fill it with water. Put it on the stove, and let the heat invite the steam to sing. Pour the water over dried herbs, loose leaf, or in a bag. Let it sit, and sit with it, (maybe outside). After 5 minutes, or ten, have … Continue reading Tea
I wrote the following post four years ago. The issues outlined in it are still a struggle, but we can only change what we name, right? Right. So, here it is again, slightly modified to fit the present.
I spend too much time looking at screens.
I have decided this before, but it screens have proved very persistent at creeping back into the limelight. They have become a central part of my days, and I am realizing that my balance is off. I have been crafting my definition of what “simple living” means to me for a long time now. But even with a mindset that is pretty solidly committed to principals of simplicity or “enough but not too much”, it still seems like screens have been taking center stage. I need to figure out how much screen time is enough, but not too much.
Generally, when I think about living simply, my list includes the following:
A few months ago, I sat down with my nature-connection colleague Sean Guinan of the Environmental Pediatrics Institute to chat about “rewilding childhood.” It’s a concept that we could all do well to embrace as our use of technology expands and our children are born into a world that is vastly different from the one that greeted us. I’m in that weird “fringe” or “micro” generation, the one that includes anybody born from about 1977 through 1983. When I was in high school, my friend Jena helped me come up with my first email address. There was a class called “keyboarding,” and the computers were huge machines that took up entire desks. We did research using encyclopedias, and there were limits to how many “web” resources you could use when writing a paper. I had a cell phone in college but almost never used it since it was so expensive, and I turned in my senior paper …. on paper, and it got returned marked up in red ink. Social media was not a thing until I was well out of college, though Instant messaging had started to permeate the campus the last few years of my undergraduate days. In short, I remember what it was like to live in the analog world, and digital technology took on a ‘life of its own’ at about the same time I did. Those who share my generation, or those who were born in generations prior might resonate with the following:
If you grew up in the 1980s or before, it’s likely you spent much of your free time during childhood running around outside, making forts, chasing butterflies, or just kicking around with the neighborhood kids. You didn’t have a cell phone and the video game options were limited. Going outside was the best option.
The real challenge is, and has always been, remembering how to live. ~Ian Mackenzie
This morning the thermometer on the back deck says -9 when I walk into the kitchen to feed the cats after rolling out of bed. I haven’t been getting up in a very timely manner lately: No work schedule, the sun not rising until 7:50am, plus frigid temperatures means there’s not a lot of incentive for getting up early. At some point, this will probably shift, but for now, it is what it is. I’m trying not to fight with myself over the little things. But this lack of routine is throwing me off balance, and sometimes I feel like I have forgotten how to live in the modern world of appointments, deadlines, meetings, phone calls, and quality assurance programs. Continue reading “Remembering How To Live”
Heidi Barr | Author 