I'd Better Make it Meaningful

I think I get it. It was an evolution. I started out like
everyone else trying to make money. But living in suburbia was doing me in. So
we moved off-grid. I still wanted money, but it became less important. Then I
hit 50. Then we dealt with a major health issue. Then a friend from public
school died. Holy crap! How could he die? I still picture him in my mind as a
12-year-old. So apparently time does march on. Apparently even though I could
never conceive of getting old … I am.

I find inspiration in the most unlikely of places. I read a
book by Andrew Nikiforuk called “Empire of the Beetle.” I love his books. He
wrote an exceptional book about Wiebo Ludwig about the effects of sour
gas/natural gas drilling on the people that live where it goes on. He wrote a
great book on the tar sands, and let’s be very clear, regardless of what
Canadian politicians want to call it, it is tar. Bitumen is what they use to
pave roads. Also know as tar.

“Empire of the Beetle” is about the devastating effects of
the pine beetle and how human folly has exacerbated its effects. Fire
suppression and a warming climate are allowing it run roughshod over North
America’s forests.

He writes about people who built dream homes in pine forests
and who now live in a field. Can you imagine? Watching the towering pines that
surround your house die? It sounds devastating. And he finds an artist trying
to makes some sense of it, to help people deal with the grief of the loss of
their forests. And he quotes the artist Peter von Tiesenhausen trying to deal
with this loss and how it has motivated him. He says “What am I going to do
with the time I have left? I’d better make it meaningful.”

I keep coming back to all of this as I pull weeds. Do I want
to go back to the corporate world? I worked for years for a company that made
industrial strainers. Some of them ended up in water treatment plants. That’s a
good thing. But my inclination is that more of them ended up in oil refineries
and pipelines. And that was always an ethical dilemma for me. Money versus what
I thought about the impact of humans on the planet.

Running a CSA removes that dilemma. If I have to boil down
all my beliefs about the state of the planet, and the state of the climate and
my impact on it, growing food just seems to be the ultimate way for me to tread
the lightest. Jumping on planes and going to environmental conferences and
blabbering on using oxymorons like ‘sustainable development’ is just a huge
hypocrisy.

But people have to eat. And the more local the food the better.
And the more sustainably grown, the better.  And of all the things I could do, ultimately the universe
has said, “It’s all about the food.”

Growing food is hard, hot work. And while I’m busy growing
food I spend a lot of time asking myself ‘Why am I not sitting at my computer
doing a catalog for a strainer company? Why am I watching my brassicas getting
eaten and spending everyday feeling as if I’m never ever caught up to what has
to be done in this garden? Why not just get back in that money economy. Why not
let someone else do this for me? Why not just be like everybody else?”

I finally accept that for me, that’s not meaningful.

Buddhist monks spend their lives trying to find meaning
through meditation. And some people walk the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain
trying to find meaning. And some people go to the mall each weekend and search
for meaning in stuff they bring home in a bag. Stuff taken from the earth.

In the time I have left, I am going to grow food. It is
meaningful. It’s hard and hot and frustrating but there is nothing that can
come close to the gratification of being able to fill boxes with the fruits of
my labor to share with my CSA members.

If you are reading this as you work at some job that doesn’t
seem to be providing you with meaning in your life, it is important for you to
avoid thinking that growing food is some sort of ideal. It is tough work. You
can’t always control the results. You can’t take a holiday at the time of year
when most people are relaxing at their cottage. And if you live in North
America and are bombarded by the constant noise of the media reminding you of
the importance of saving for your retirement, you will spend a great deal of
time freaking out about the fact that you haven’t. That you choose to take one
day at a time, and to live the way most humans who ever lived on this planet
always have… actually working up until the time you die. And being productive
in those final years.

Once you remove yourself from that money economy, you
basically say “This will be my life.” There will be no retirement. And that’s
OK. No days reading on the dock at the cottage. No mall walking. No trying to
find some activity to give those final years meaning. I got off the bandwagon
early.

“What am I going to do with the time I have left? I better
make it meaningful.”

I will grow food. It is meaningful.