I'm always intrigued with what has been and what is coming, especially related to culture and people groups.
In fact, my fascination is so deep, at times I feel lost in my own culture, mainly because I question everything.
If you question everything, you are willing to try new things that go against the grain, which I'm prone to do. When the anxiety I feel about a certain way of American or Western life feels too disruptive or sideways, I'll go off on my own and try something different. It's rarely "new", just something old that's lost and is ready to be recycled.
For example, our connection to nature and the seasons seem to be diminishing as the years go by. In my lifetime as a city girl, this aspect of life was never heralded per se, especially if you didn't live near parks, but even that seems to be diminishing.
As a result, I've taken more educational and purposeful steps to relearn what I've lost or am losing. I'm trying to be more mindful of the times of sunsets and sunrises, pausing for those daily rhythms. I try and walk outside every day, even its for five minutes (I frequently do not like this but never regret it). I've started tracking the cycles of the moon. I'm trying to learn plant and tree names.
These are all pretty interesting from an awareness perspective but the biggest change has been in food. I've started getting out to the orchards and farms that are organized, buying fruit in bulk and doing some drying.
I hate canning in all forms. I grew up around it and the heat and the mess, the giant process of it all overwhelmed me and still overwhelms me. I have a very short attention span and the length of the processes for what seemed too little return doesn't float my boat. I am grateful I have memories of women in my family who did those activities, but I'm not planning on it myself.
Drying has been a nice balance in a lot of ways. It provides healthy snacking options in limited quantities, has only a few easy steps and produces a lot for the effort. It supports local farmers and keeps my cupboards prepared for healthy food without the packaging.
Finally, one of the interesting benefits has been allowing my life to be shaped by seasons. I usually wake up everyday feeling like aside from work responsibilities, I can plan my day with what I want. If you are trying to grow and store food in any meaningful way, you have to respond to what is in season. You work harder during the spring for planting and then again at harvest. You abdicate choice in your life and respond to the cycles of nature that used to govern all our days and often our communal lives.
I think this is the intersection that intrigues me most: where is the health of freedom and when does it create ennui. If you can get a tomato from Mexico in February, what's the point of drying them or canning them in August when you could be doing something else?
These are questions that to me don't have clear answers, but I think are worth discussing. I have felt a sense of personal fulfillment with my attention to our food that I haven't felt before. It is very different than just shopping at a local health food grocery store. Very different.
In orienting to the cycles of life, I feel a greater sense of connection to something bigger than myself that I often don't contemplate in quiet, regular rhythms. If I am out in nature, I'm usually doing something, not embedded, contemplative or contributing in a significant way.
I am excited about the small changes I'm noticing, some that are hard to quantify without sounding sentimental.
I just know I like it and plan to continue.