There’s always been this trend of looking nostalgically
towards the past. After a few decades, we look back. Either we hate the
fashions or we wear them with pride. These last couple of years has been
heavily influenced by minimalism. We crave the simple life: farms, rooster
calls, summer linen drying in the breeze, homemade jam, shared gatherings
underneath the stars. Currently, blogs are ranting about how you must DIY your
life—drink mint lemonade or Tennessee whiskey out of mason jars, sew some
flowers on your shirt, and collect shells for a necklace. It’s been enough solicitation
that I am starting to get sick of it. Why do we need to be constantly reminded
of the simple pleasures in life that already exist? If they are so simple, then
we shouldn’t need to make an endless effort to complete them. Why has slowing
down become exceedingly hard for us to achieve?
Perhaps our forgetfulness is linked to technology. We’ve got
everything we could want at our fingertips. We are lazy. Let’s watch another episode of Portlandia. Take-out sounds good
tonight. We aren’t required to physically work for our food like our
father’s father’s did in the past—hunting deer and slow cooking it over the
fire. Dinner comes in a can now. The grocery store has everything we could ever
want, year round. Unfortunately, that isn’t how nature works. We shouldn’t be
allowed to buy a banana from Jamaica or Kiwi from Australia 365 days a year. Nonetheless
we do it because we have outsmarted Mother Nature. Thus, our own skills have
turned society around full circle. We are at the point where we can’t think for
ourselves. (I always use a calculator because I avoid doing mathematical equations
in my head at all costs.) We longingly gaze back at where we started from: simplicity
in the 1800s never smelled sweeter (minus the diseases).
We don’t, however, live in the age of Thoreau where we can
chill at Walden Pond for unlimited months and write about dandelion seeds
scattered in the wind. We’ve got work to do. But, in today’s tech world, with
everything able and ready for us, we should have a lot more time to make that
dark wood stained craft table seen in Kinfolk. So what’ the problem? We are
over stuffing our schedules with additional work. We are neglecting our leisure
agenda and not setting aside enough time to do things we enjoy. Also, the
thought of making something ourselves is tiresome when everything else comes
instantaneously. What we need is to reprioritize.
I guess all of those fancy blog posts about listening to the
sound of the waves or making your own apartment herb garden have worthwhile intentions.
Though it’s all I see 24/7 on the blogs that I read, it is necessary to keep
repeating the mantra: Slow down. Enjoy your life. Slowing down takes
time. That is the entire point. And in the twenty-first century, every day gets
harder and harder to move into this backward mindset. Just the same as setting
a morning alarm, we have to remind ourselves that we are living to live.
Words + photo by Andrea Dumovich
