March 6, 2016
I’m noticing my tendency to not let go of the past. I don’t mean to relive the past or stay in my childhood. What it seems to be about is more a sense of unwillingness to let go of “the old ways”, so to speak.
In my childhood, I lived in a neighborhood with it’s own local grocery, bakery, confectionary/convenience, barber, drug store, ball field and much more, all within 5 blocks of our home. These stores didn’t start to close down until the larger markets, with slightly lower prices began to emerge, in a time that the auto made us more mobile and such larger stores therefore more convenient.
Likewise, my school, downtown and virtually any business or play area in the small city continued to be accessible by foot, and there was a natural willingness, within me, to walk anywhere in town. In fact, you might say that I often preferred this self motivated ability over depending on other means of transportation.
Along with these simple facts of my younger years in this lifetime, I find a natural resistance to living too close to a more urban lifestyle. While where I live, right now, is convenient to the highway and local businesses, lending this to easy access into the “big city”, the ocean beaches, and woods areas as well, there is the greater part of me and my own spirit that finds living in this environment at least undesirable and I know myself to presently be very unsatisfied with this time period in my life for these reasons.
Simply stated, my preference is to live in a smaller community with more limited access to urban conveniences, requiring less and more coordinated trips into a larger urban area. This allows me to be much calmer and at peace than living “on the verge of the city”, as I feel that I am now. I don’t expect everyone to understand my perspective here. I know of many people who are very urban oriented and would not do well living in a rural and/or small town environment.
I’m grateful for the opportunity and experience that comes with living where I do now, outside of Portland, Oregon. As I am grateful for a similar experience living in and immediately outside of Boulder, Colorado (though the difference in urban experience between the two is considerable). And, I’m grateful for the knowledge of what of these experiences work for me. While I could do as others do, imagining that the sound of traffic on the four lane state highway (2 blocks from where I currently live) to be ocean waves or the wind in the trees, I can feel the experience of this highway within my body and that is proving, more and more, to be difficult to overlook.
Along with this adversity to the urban environment, I find myself desiring to step back to a time when our world wasn’t full of plastic waste and careless litter, and there was considerably more reuse of materials. And, beyond that time was that in which more of materials, foods and tools we had in our day to day living came from raw, organic and natural materials. There wasn’t the waste that comes with this modern age.
Beyond even the times mentioned, were the times when our spirituality and connection with our natural environment was more important than anything outside of our families and others of our species. This connection with the ancient knowledge and ways of being, the ancient spirituality and understandings continue to grow and surface within me. I hope and pray that one day I be able to share with you all that which dwells within my very spirit and indeed within yours.
Walk with me.
Peter J Quandt