Occasionally, typically about once a month, I wake up feeling profoundly dissatisfied with life. I feel agitated and frustrated and restrained by living in the city and working in an office.
Traffic. Neighbours. Noise.
I crave a country existence. Wide open spaces where we could keep a few animals. A big verandah and a creek and a nearby town hall.
Generally, after a day or two, the longing again fades to more of a distant pang. I get on with life, focus on the wonderful things about living where we do. Friends and family nearby.
Jobs.
It's a luxury, I suppose, this longing. In a time when the global economy continues to convulse and jitter and billions of people around the world would, literally, give a limb to have what we have, it seems selfish and ungrateful to want something different.
To consider something beyond options for employment and a lovely home when you have a young child. It's just silly, surely.
And yet, here it is again. Back to taunt me.
I went to a garage sale on Sunday at a small house near ours. The middle aged man I spoke to said his elderly parents had just gone into a nursing home and he was selling off all their possessions.
It got me to thinking. If that's me one day, shuffling off into a nursing home after a life lived raising kids in the 'burbs, will I be happy with what I've done? Will it be enough?
Or will I be profoundly and irreversibly disappointed with myself for not listening to this voice playing in the background, telling me that wanting a different life is not a crime and that maybe, just maybe, now is the time to go after it?
I know what you mean. I kept thinking that when I had to say goodbye to my beloved great aunt last October, a few days before she died. I stood there and wondered if she felt content with her life. I know there are things I might change if I had the opportunity, but at you say, despite tight budgets and day to day complaints, there are so many people who look at us and think us rich. I suppose the key is to make our hearts as rich.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar yearning a while back. But I realised that for me it was more about the pace of my life, rather than the place. I would probably still be doing the crazy saturday sport run around and failing miserably to keep up with the washing pile and my list of things to do. At the moment I don't have time to sit in my back yard, and probably wouldn't make time even it was a beautiful creek.
ReplyDeleteI resolved to take things slowly, get my hands into the dirt more often, take on less, savour more. I resolve it just about every day. Haven't really managed it yet, but working towards.
But that's me. As for you? I don't think wanting a different life is a crime. The more peeps moving around on the planet happy, peaceful and contented, the better for all of us.
What a post - you've stopped me in my tracks. For me, i am mosty livign the life that i want to live. It's an amazingly ordinary one; like others i would like to have no mortgage, not have to work, but within that framework, i'm doing okay. For me it's finding joy and beauty within the ordinariness (i know that risks soundign corny, but there are no other words). I look around me, see details, hear noises, smell things that i'm sure a lot of people rush past. it's also workign to live, not livign to work - i don't define myself by my job, i look forward to what happens outside the 9-5.
ReplyDeletei think i shall come back to your post again this week. thank you.
Hi, and thanks for popping over to my blog. I know what you mean- I have these country dreams myself and then I whack myself over the head and remind myself that my children would drive me bonkers trapped on an isolated property and the school drop off would be an hour round trip and then I come back to reality! Plus there would be a distinct lack of op shops and that would be the nail in the coffin really. melx
ReplyDelete