Otherwise, I enjoy flower farming and grow about 1/2 acre of flowers and sell wholesale. Close second. Sometimes it is stressful in the midst of July/August weeds but then once you come out the other side, it’s all worth it.
With small kids, these sort of lazy tasks bring out focus, physical awareness and exploration. Living in the city, these are valuable respites from chaos and noise.
When I’m on a long, multi hour gravel bike ride - I usually don’t listen to music - just the sounds of world around me and let my mind freely wander. As my mind wanders it finds the tough emotional pieces I haven’t yet processed and starts chipping away at them. Sometimes I end up crying quite hard depending on what my mind has decided to work through. I’m sure I look like a maniac to whatever farmers I’m passing by.
Fly fishing on the other hand is less emotionally intense and much more calming. The dull roar of the river, the intense focus on the water - trying to spot the fish movements within it, trying to identify the tiny bug life around me so I can better select a fly, the focus on placing my fly and my line precisely where I want it. The rhythmic casting, mending, and recasting. Finding constant balance as you wade across uneven river beds. It’s a rare thing where I can fully silence my mind but it’s easy to do when fly fishing. It’s like a deep reprieve from the otherwise constant chatter of thinking - just calm and serene.
For me it's loading and unloading the dishwasher. I hated it, still do, but if I'm careful to approach it with a very delicate kind of focus I can lose myself in the deep mysteries of the task.
Life seems a bit better after a long walk preferably somewhere nice
I hated having to do this a s a child. When I returned home after being away for quite a while, I picked up just to reduce mom's burden.
Then I found myself actually wanting to do it, just for the mental space it gives. The sense of cleanliness you get adds to the quality of the experience.
Most of us spend our work time balancing 100 different things, putting out fires, bouncing between meetings, answering adhoc pings via calls/zooms/slacks, and struggling to do the deep work we are allegedly paid for in between.
There's a therapeutic aspect to certain kinds of physical hobby/chore work or full focussed hobbyist time that counterbalances this.
Otherwise at the end of a day of being burned out, we ruminate & doom scroll which only makes things worse.
It’s been said over and over but they never reveal the deepest truth. We should all be picking berries all the time but we can’t because capitalism steals our time and wealth and makes us suffer.
I mean, can you deny that’s what he’s saying here? “I find it more pleasurable picking berries than writing code or working in a coffee shop or yada yada yada?”
reminds me of discovering minecraft for the first time a long time ago
Picking currants? I dread that every year. Same with the raspberries and the cherries and ... It's a chore, I really don't like it at all. Especially having to make sure there's no little green stem left on the currants. That work drives me nuts. Only thing worse is puzzles.
I used to enjoy 18 hour flights to Asia pre-WiFi for true disconnection, plus time zone difference to US East Coast made the time spent on the ground there feel at least half disconnected
The more interesting thing is the use of "exoskeleton" type tools like excavators , automobiles, or even things like forks. Our brains basically consider them an extension of our body once we learn to use them. Fascinating stuff!
Having to pick berries is not.
I have done both throughout my life. I can assure you very few engineers would prefer to be out in a field in the sun or rain working 16 hour days in harvest season to get the berries in before they rot.
And that goes as much for wild berry picking for sustenance, sustenance farming, homesteading, or commercial farming.
I love my little garden. It’s zen for me to be out there trimming, doing soil amendments, picking fruit, etc. I also worked on my parents 2 acre garden that sustained the household (and later sold at market). I highly prefer my easy white collar job to that.
So yeah, I do deny what he’s saying there. I enjoyed programming for fun way more than gardening for survival. Just like I enjoy gardening for fun way more than engineering for survival. The latter scenario is preferable to the former for the vast majority of people.
Same feeling as well a well optimized hot path.
Wait until you hear about hunting!
> doing something is not meditation.
so usually those conversations end with a "hm yes that's nice too"
I don't think that he wants to pick berries all the time. Or be without his family all the time (even though he prefers being on his own with the berries).
I envy the guy. I wouldn't want to pick berries all the time. But having a routine source of release and tuning out like that which happens to commune with nature and use one's hands...
I was building workbenches for my students last week. A lot of the time was spent outside breaking down pallets and staging things. It was too hot, but I saw the trees sway, the few puffy clouds move, the lizards dart through my path, the squirrels squabble. The few times the wind suddenly picked up felt like heaven. My body ached in new ways. My fingers got into a rhythm and I watched them do things.
I could easily get a job doing work like that. No! I want to be with my students, and I want to work on my hard cerebral projects. But there is a joy to being in nature and to do things with your hands, and there is a rhythm to doing time consuming work, and when we make time for it, it feels really good in a primal way.
I wish that meditation experts would either dumb things down better or not try at all.
It is ok to be focused and mindful with different aids. Always has been. There are self focused (mindful) and also self-abnegating traditions, and all count.
No harm to.me if others have a different way. If music, or chants, or gardening, have at it.
I was using that as a metaphor. Meaning, we should be living a life where there is no manufactured societal stress we need to escape.
Not everyone shares your opinion that what needs to be done for you to eat meat, is fine only so long as you can pay someone else to do it for you.
I don't think that at all. I think struggle and making stuff better and working hard and feeling ourselves grow is great.
And I wish I had something routine like his picking of berries, because sometimes just feeling existence and our place in it... feels really good. I'm envious of the people who find a routine that does this well for them, while I mostly find it by happenstance.
And I think you do better at the other stuff when you go pick berries.
I see this mimicking of capitalism as a depressing attempt to be in control. A re-expression of the power dynamic.
This is just my opinion.
Owls spit out roughly one pellet a day.
Meditating on what this means will bring you closer to nature, although one of the primary benefits of this closeness tends to be gratitude that we can engage with nature on our own terms.
Ever wonder how Nixon was able to establish the EPA and sign into law the clean air act, the clean water act, the marine mammal protection act, the legacy of parks program, and the endangered species act when the green movement was (and is) mostly associated with left-leaning activists? Hunters. They were a big part of the conservative base and provided cover for Nixon and his conservation efforts.
If you're growing edible stuff, you need to remove the weed in many parts of the world otherwise you won't have any vegetables eventually as the weeds will overgrow everything else. You also don't want something you cannot eat to take nutrients and sun from what you can eat.
The redcurrants are really small. To fill my bucket, I need to spend a lot of time. And these days, I actually prefer picking them alone, not with my kids, not with family. Just me, the berries, the sky, and the birds.
Strange thing is, as a teenager I hated picking berries. Whenever my mom asked me, I really did not want to do it. It felt like work I was forced into, work that took me away from what I wanted, which was to be with my friends, to be in the company of others.
Even at night, if I happened to wake up, I would check the window to see what the weather would be. Rain meant I could stay in, read, play with my own stuff. Sun meant I could go swim in the lake. Both felt like a kind of freedom, just pointed in different directions.
Now, decades later, I plan my vacations around making sure I have time for it. I would miss it so much if I did not get the chance to pick berries.
Maybe it is about the life phase. Back then, I wanted to be out there with people. Now I am doing quite a lot, and I need these moments of solitude, of quietness, to actually think.
At first, when I am out there picking, it is ruminating. I am processing work, processing life, whatever tension I am carrying that day. Some berries are sour, some are sweet, and I eat them as I go. It is just part of the work. The birds are only a summer presence at this point, background noise while my head is still busy.
But slowly, I get fewer new ideas, fewer new things to think about. It gets quieter, calmer. And that is when I actually start noticing the birds properly. The young ones, still learning to fly, are curious. They come close, checking out who I am and what I am doing there among their bushes. The parents stay further back, more careful, singing warnings to their chicks, telling them to watch out for this creature.
That is usually where I end up. Not thinking about anything in particular anymore. Just the berries in my hand, sour and sweet, the birds around me, the sky above. Nothing to process, nothing to figure out. Just being there.