Strange things happen when you set alarms to wake you up. Sometimes you wake up a few minutes before the alarm is due to ring. Sometimes you press the snoze button …again …and again … and again! Sometimes you switch it off, close your eyes for a minute and open them to find that half an hour (or more) has gone past. That last was this morning! I’m not sure whether this winter is actually colder than normal or if I just feel it more and so am more reluctant to leave my warm nest in the morning.
Today I came across a useful bit of vocabulary for such situations: Hurkle-durkle - a 200 year old Scottish term meaning to lounge in bed long after it’s time to get up. Her are some sayings: “Happiness is hukle-durkling”. “It’s been a long week. I think I’ll just hurkle-durkle today.” My own contribution! “Forget about hygge, just hurkle-durkle”.
I came across this article about a woman who decided to live without money, closed her bank account, gave her money away to family members and escaped from stress. ““I’d been feeling this growing despair about the economic system we live in and the harm I was doing to other people and to the planet, even when I tried to buy ethically, while I lived in this world of privilege.”
Then she read a book about someone who opted out of society and she decided to do the same. She made a list of the stuff she might need in order to be self-sufficient:
“It turned out to be a short list because I already had things like pots and pans and a toothbrush, and I discovered I really didn’t need much to be comfortable. Then I just started ticking things off, figuring out how I could meet my needs without having any negative impacts.”
I wondered about the toothbrush. I replace mine at regular intervals. Did she plan on using the same toothbrush for the rest of her life.,
At first I stereotyped her as an latter day California hippy but it turns out she comes from New South Wales.
She was 46 when she made that decision. Ten years on, she’s still living without money. She’s lived in a shack on a friend’s farm, done some house-sitting, shared a house with her daughter and family. While I admire her tenacity, I wonder about the while thing. It’s probably a lot easier to make that life-style choice when you have already acquired stuff and can choose what to reject. It must also be easier if you have friends with a farm where they will let you build a shack! Much harder if you are in your idealistic twenties and choose to opt out of society!
In our twenties and thirties we had the use of a patch of land where we grew a lot of our own vegetables. It’s very satisfying. I can understand the appeal of living off the land but it’s hard to combine it with working for a living. And without a network of friends and family, it’s a difficult life-style to maintain. Not something you would recommend as a solution to young people’s homelessness and joblessness!
I think I would have to draw the line at what that lady called ‘dumpster diving”, scavenger in bins for useful stuff and even for food!
My inner cynic also wonders if there is a book hiding in there somewhere!
There you go.
Just because I enjoy their songs, here’s a photo of The Traveling Wilburys. Now I wonder what the lady who opted out of the cash-driven society does for music.
And here’s a photo of a pair of former lovers, Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash, together as part of the Fire Aid concert, raining money to help those who lost their homes in the recent wildfires in California.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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