Back to basics

 January 1, 2021

Well, if this is going to be a blog, maybe I should write in it more often.  And since travel (geographically and physically) is going to be out of reach for a while longer, I may as well admit that the human race has traveled to a weird place as a species in the past year.  So, here goes...

Back to basics. Each year on the first day, people set "New Year's Resolutions", which last for varying lengths of time, anywhere from 1 day to a couple of months. I used to do that too, but then I discovered I was more successful at making changes in my life by setting targets or goals, and then determining how changing my behaviour could help me reach those goals. But then, that stopped working too. The past year has been tough on everyone, and I'm no exception. Covid-19 introduced a new level of behaviour modification - sometimes good, and sometimes with negative effects. Many humans that should have been setting good examples behaved badly, triggering an avalanche of yuck. A lot of people have been lumping everything into "2020 was a bad year", but really, it's not any worse than the years of other pandemics (like the Black Plague, or Typhoid, or any number of wars that saw thousands or millions of deaths). So, as the past year came to a close, and there was hope for the current pandemic in the form of new vaccines, and a new president-elect of the U.S. that appears to be more.... well let's just leave it at that. This isn't intended to be a political diatribe, just my random thoughts about what a new number in the "YYYY" field means to me. The clock ticked forward, but really, life itself hasn't changed much. No more than being one year (one day) older. Unless you change it. Let me repeat that so it sinks in. Life won't change, unless you change it. Sometimes, that's really hard. Accepting that maybe decisions you made in the past aren't working for you anymore, and changing your mind. That's ok. What worked yesterday isn't necessarily going to work today or tomorrow. Passions that you held onto for a long time may fade, that's ok too. You may have new passions. You may be able to leave some responsibilities behind. You need to let old negativities die. People you have lost are still gone. Make new memories.

Back to basics. I've been giving this a lot of thought lately. As life has slowed in the past year, and as I watched how wildlife behaves, and how nature works all by itself, and how humans behave, and think about how humans are always questioning everything from "why am I here?" to "what can I do to make more money?". My question becomes, why is human nature so much different than nature? My answer is - it doesn't. Or rather, to me, it shouldn't.

If you watch nature, and wildlife specifically (because it is more in the same timing as humans), everything lives for one reason, and one reason only. To live. Simple. Easy. I started thinking about this more seriously back in the summer, as we watched a pack of wolves from behind one-way glass, with the wolves in a protected area but living as naturally as possible (other than hunting wild game for their own survival). I watched and learned, tried to learn, something that humans have not needed to understand for millenia, that the object of life is not to become wealthy, or have more than anyone else, it is simply to live, and then, when it is time, stop living.

We fill our time, in first world countries anyway, with pursuits that wind up becoming our passion, and then our whole way of life. We've forgotten - because we can - that those passions are really, in nature, just a way to fill the time between needing to feed our bodies, care for our bodies and those of our offspring. In lean times, or in lean places, caring for our bodies can take most or all of our time. In centuries past, before mass production and distribution of food, and the replacement of the necessities of life with money, feeding and caring for our bodies took a lot of our time. Money was only invented as a way of purchasing the things we need to live when we couldn't produce it ourselves. And over the same centuries, humans have found ways to hoard and stash and steal to have more money than we need, because we have forgotten that all we really need is to live. If only everyone could understand that the things money can buy do not add any years to your life. It doesn't keep you alive any better.

I started looking at my own life. At my priorities, my passions, my values, my goals. And I started thinking about what it might take to feel more satisfied. More alive. More natural. More content. I have so many wonderful things, everything I need to live. And yet I question. And if I'm questioning, then those who have enough for many lives (and yet they can only use one), must also continuously question. I cannot help anyone else. I can only do what I can in my own life to get back to the basics of living. Taking care of my own body. My own spirit, my own space. That means caring also for my home, my financial stability (not wealth accumulation, that would be extra), and my own pack (family). Once I've got that taken care of, then I can play. If I have anything left over, I will share with those who are not able to care for themselves.