First published on JustPlainMarie.ca Sep 16, 2018
We are made as social creatures who need other humans, but the only way it works is if we are all operating at our finest, contributing to our best ability, and taking responsibility for our own lives and needs.
Well, let’s look at what’s going on right now. Even if you live in the country, you and those around you likely have a job of some sort. Five (and maybe six) days a week, you head to that job and put in eight, ten or even twelve hours of work.
Getting to that job almost always involves a commute and then there is another one at the end of the work day to get home.
Most people in our society either own a home and pay a mortgage and property taxes, or they live in a rented house or apartment and pay rent.
The average person here in North America has a car, and perhaps two. Here in rural Nova Scotia, it is difficult for anyone to get to work without a vehicle so a house with multiple adults is likely to have a vehicle for each. Owning even one car requires payment of the cost of the car, insurance, repairs and gasoline.
There are one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week.
At least forty hours every week are spent at work. If your commute is half an hour each way, there goes another five hours. Rural workers may have an hour to drive each way, and city dwellers may be stuck in traffic for up to two hours morning and night. So there go between five and twenty more hours.
Everyone has to sleep. The average adult sleeps nearly eight hours every night. So an additional forty hours are consumed by resting in order to be prepared for the next day … so you can go to work.
Then there are the routine tasks that are required to maintain the house and car or cars. There are commitments that involve others.
Everyone eats, so that takes time.
All of these “average” lifestyle activities quickly add up, so much so that anyone who lives an “average” lifestyle has less than two hours every day that they can call their own. Every other hour is spoken for, taken up by activities that support the lifestyle.
When you think about it, the average lifestyle is one of complete dependency.
We have to work because we have to pay for things that we really don’t own.
We have to work because we have to buy food that we don’t have time to produce.
We have to do things that we necessarily do not want to do because we are made to feel that doing those things is normal. We do things that we don’t want to do because we want to conform.
When I think back to my grandparents, an amazing and relatively recent example of self-reliance, it becomes clear that they didn’t do this alone. In a community of about fifty self-reliant families, most of their needs could be met through people they knew and could trust. While each farm could manage with little outside help, they knew the value of trusted, reliable neighbours. As a friend of mine from the Old Order Mennonite community often says “Your neighbours can live without you, but you can’t live without your neighbours.”
It is important to make special mention of this.
A self reliant community or village – made up of responsible, self-reliant households that work together for the betterment of the community and care for those unable to care for themselves – is a powerful thing.
This is not what I mean by dependency, and going off into the woods to live as a lone wolf without other people is not self reliance. In fact, it’s a great way to lose your sanity, your health, and possibly your life.
We are made as social creatures who need other humans, but the only way it works is if we are all operating at our finest, contributing to our best ability, and taking responsibility for our own lives and needs.
Self-reliance rejects the “average” lifestyle.
Self reliance doesn’t conform simply for the sake of conforming.
Self reliance isn’t influenced by what someone else says, even if they’re telling you that you must do this or that thing in order to be self-reliant.
Self reliance is about living life on your own terms and taking responsibility for your own decisions, actions and choices.
It’s about living life as a producer – even of something small – and working together with other self reliant producers.
It’s about owning your … as my Mennonite friend would say … crap. Own your crap.
*cough* *cough* It actually means ‘garbage’ and comes from the word chaff. If Old Order Mennonites think it’s a fine word, it’s good enough for me.
Take responsibility for whatever mess is in your life and deal with it instead of waiting for someone else to pick up and take over. Someone can pick up and take over, but you will lose a little bit of ‘you’ every time that happens.
Self reliance is about independence and non-conformity.
Self reliance is about freedom.
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