The morning sun is coming in through the bedroom window, flooding the mountains and valleys of the bed covers with light and shadow. I sit in bed with a cup of coffee, savoring this last, beautiful morning, putting off the final good-bye.
We finished yesterday with the packing, and packing and packing… Endings give you such a different perspective than beginnings. Sorting through memories, deciding which ones to keep and which ones to put in the industrial strength garbage sack in the middle of the floor. Some memories just get too old to pack up and unpack one more time. They outlive their juice. There comes a point when some memories stop being filled with sweetness and become… something else. Anchors, maybe. Into the bag with it. Make room for something new.
Now, at last, all our earthly belongings have been either given away or are tidily packed away in boxes, securely taped shut. Stacked and waiting for the moving truck we go to pick up today. Coming from a lifelong history of living in or close to a city, it seems odd we’ve just taken it in stride that we’ll have to drive an hour and a half to pick up the U-Haul truck today and an hour and a half back before we can start loading it with our menagerie of boxes.
Remote appeals to me, though. It’s one of the things I’ve loved about being here. It feels freer, wilder, somehow safer. Easier to breathe. It’s helped me see life differently – how I fit in it, how I want to fit into this amazing world. It’s been about a different way of being. Slower, more aware, more awake.
But there’s something else I hadn’t anticipated about living in a small, remote place. The issue of money. Income. Cash-flow. Some means by which to pay the rent, buy food. It’s sublime if you have a job, but not if you don’t. Since I haven’t been able to find gainful employment (and believe me, I’ve scoured every possibility) here in this small village on the wild, west coast of an island I’ve come to love, then where?
Money. I’ve tritely deemed it a necessary evil most of my life while in pursuit of things more meaningful, more fulfilling. Maybe because the less quantifiable things like meaning and fulfillment seem more attainable, and I get to redefine them at will as I grow and change. I like to think of them as flexible. They don’t fit on a spreadsheet, and believe me, I know my way around a spreadsheet. They’re more about being than about performing. I like that. But what if the whole money thing is about something else? What if it’s actually just another thing that pushes me to learn and grow? Forces me to keep trying and experimenting and looking for new possibilities and ways and chances, because the rent still has to be paid, and we still have to eat. What if the real issue is about something else? What if inside it’s greedy, shallow face, it’s really about pushing us to find meaning and fulfillment? Choosing to retire early and live on a small, fixed income is a game changer from how we’ve lived our lives up until now. Being firmly ensconced in corporate North America for over 30 years affords a different lifestyle than the one we’re about to embrace.
Oh, didn’t I mention taking an early retirement was the only way we could find to survive from day to day until we figure out something else? Social Security and a very small pension ravaged by the unscrupulous economics of the last decade aren’t much to live on, but it pays really cheap rent & buys some groceries. If we can find a way to live within these reduced means so we don’t have to jump back into the rat-race again, suddenly it becomes completely about the pursuit of living life differently instead of about career management, a nicer house, a newer car. Maybe that’s putting a proverbial, rose-coloured spin on the ‘necessary evil’, but maybe there’s a kernel of truth in it. There’s power in truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is. I want that power in my life. I want to be on speaking terms with it. Intimate. Engaged. That willingness to look at life for what it really is and discover new realities. There’s probably going to be a lot more to this next adventure than I expected.
