Living with Intention Has to Start Somewhere

Spring begins the New Year

We spent the Spring equinox working in the garden and setting up our patio. It was 50-60F degrees for over a week and we took full advantage of it. It’s a good thing we did because today it’s snowing again.

Someone asked me once whether dealing with all of this snow gets old. Honestly, yes, it does. But when I stand on our hill and look out at the vast expanse of nothingness before me - meaning no other people - my heart feels full.

Dealing with difficulties is the price we pay for this beautiful isolation. For me, it’s worth it.

2023

I realize that not many people want to park their car two miles from their house and ride a snowmobile home. Not many people want to cut a fireline around their house and store extra water just in case the annual fires come too close, but that’s where we picked.

Are we nuts? I guess that depends on how you measure sanity.

“Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants,' while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

I didn’t always know that I wanted to live on a farm or even in a rural area. I guess, like most people, I didn’t think too much about the idea of intentionally designing my life.

I left my parents’ home when I was still relatively young then I started my own family when I was just 21. Again, without intention. Things just sort of “happened” and I let them.

Purposefully designing my life was a concept I never entertained. Even as a child, no one asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact, the only goal I thought of was just to leave home. I had a vague notion of what my ideal life would look like… it involved blue carpet and a white sofa, but that’s about as specific as my imagination could be.

The only examples I had before me were the people I already knew and the things that they were doing. I stretched my mind with books and movies, but those vivid characters seemed so unreal to me. My own life was very black and white.

Meanwhile, life unfolded and I adapted. I had children young, relationships came and went, I had various jobs and moved many times… there were always bills to pay, taxes were due, children needed feeding and new clothes, there was homework to check and permission slips to sign, flat tires and new transmissions to pay for.

Life went on happening and there wasn’t much time to stop and ponder. I imagine it’s much the same for everyone.

So, where do you find time to stop and ask yourself the big questions like, “Why am I doing this? Do I even enjoy it? Is this all there is to life? Are these people actually my friends?”

Like so much else, those moments are usually unintentional. They seem to come when we face a loss. When someone dies or otherwise leaves us unexpectedly, our perspective shifts and we see things through a new lens. It usually doesn’t last too long, though. Soon, we’re right back in the swing of life again, responding to events instead of acting with intention. The thoughts fade until the next milestone moment occurs. For some people, that’s a long time.

That was my story, too, until it wasn’t.

Maybe the difference for me was the mounting number of losses I incurred in a short span of time. One after another they came until, finally, I broke.

At a certain point, I realized my life just wasn’t working. The choices I kept making were wrong; the people I called friends weren’t adding anything positive to my life and I found myself jumping from one bad circumstance to another. Pivotally, I realized the common denominator was me.

Me.

I was choosing my own bad situations.

I was floating through life like a stick in the river, riding the current. I’d catch myself on this branch and that, get stuck in the rocks for awhile, collect weeds and moss, then float on.

Failing to act with intention meant I was living my life on autopilot with no one at the helm. And if I didn’t care enough to steer, someone else would happily take over - and often did.

The very act of not choosing meant I was unintentionally allowing other forces to dictate my life. And I wasn’t happy.

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill

Rush, Freewill from Permanent Waves 1980

Trusting fate or worse yet, other people, to captain my life was beyond foolish. Who would care more than me about how my own life unfolded? No one. And yet I had relinquished total control of my life to the winds of fate by not taking hold of the wheel.

I still recall the moment I realized that I had completely abandoned control. In fact, I had abandoned myself. I was devastated.

And that was the true core of my heartbreak: that I hadn’t cared enough for my own heart to take ownership of my life.

Sure, other people had been abandoning me for years, but they were only an extension of what I’d been doing to myself. Once I realized that, the blaming stopped.

If I am the problem, I can also be the solution.

I used to think of heartbreak as a negative thing - something that needed healing and repair. Now I tend to think of the heart as a nut that needs cracking. I mean, a nut is really no good until it’s cracked.

After all, I couldn’t have known what I wanted so many years ago until I felt deep in my bones what I did not want. I couldn’t have begun to design this life I have now until I felt free enough to let go of the expectations other people had for me.

The act of breaking hurts, but it can also be beautiful.

When our hearts break open, a well of feeling pours out but the heart also becomes larger and more expansive. It becomes more open to allow for taking in as well as giving.

Until we’ve truly had our hearts broken, we tend to live without an awareness of how temporary this life, and every treasure in it, is. We’re careless with our love, with our time, with our energy.

We spread ourselves thin.

We give little thought to the power of directed feeling, also known as intention.

Instead, we float aimlessly - until we sink.

The time we have here for creating our space is limited - it’s concentrated because our season is short.

The snow isolates us and makes movement difficult. People don’t visit. Animals are scarce. Our world goes dark and silent for months on end.

At first it’s nice. Silence falls with the first snow. The hunters are gone and we feel like we’re the only ones left on the mountain. We cozy up to the fire, make some hearty beef stew and watch a few movies. We make some popcorn and play some games. We read. Gradually, as months pass, reading gives way to planning and, by March, we’re ready for planning to become doing.

When Spring arrives, John and I can’t wait to bust out the garden tools and start digging. For us, the beauty of the season is punctuated by the frozen months that came before. We relish the sight of tulips breaking through the still frozen ground. Even our chickens trip over themselves fighting to get at the wisps of grass peeking through the newly thawed soil.

Everything alive is vibrating with anticipation, so ready for the thaw.

I believe the thaw is akin to life after a heartbreak. Everything is so raw and sensitive, but also open and ready to try again - soldiering on. That includes us.

This year, we’ll make things better than last year. We’re putting more thought into our garden’s design. I’m adding some feminine wildness and curves to the rigid, fenced space my Marine husband built :-) and I’m doubling the amount of herbs, onions and flowers I grew last year.

We’re adding another propane tank so we only need delivery once a year, and we’re continuing other projects like clearing brush from the aspen groves and clearing hills of 6’ high sage bushes. Of course, Henry is helping.

We’ve also said goodbye to old friends. Brisket, our beloved Shar Pei, is no longer running with our pack. Like old dogs do, he passed on.

Brisket has a new home on our hill where he can watch over all of us and the farm. We’re lucky to have had 7 years with such a character.

RIP Sweet Boy

And, recently, we’ve welcomed Phineas, a German Shepherd/Japanese Akita Inu mix from our local rescue. He’s a sweetheart and probably the only one in the house who can exhaust Henry.

After a full day of playing together.

I hope as you begin your new season that you do it with intention and a clear vision of the life you want to live. If you don’t take the wheel of your own life, who will? Who cares like you do for the outcome?

I believe in God, as I’ve said many times before, and I also believe that God’s greatest gift to us is Freewill. We may pray for potatoes but, as co-creators, God expects us to get out the hoe.

We are God’s hands in this world. Shape your life as best you can to be a beacon to others who are still searching.

I can’t say it enough: I love you all. Until next time… live well.