A Simple Kind of Life

The other day I was reading the latest Life Learning magazine. I came upon this article near the end that looked rather boring at first glance—nothing too exciting declaring how freestyle unschooling is so beneficial or anything. But I decided to read it, because I needed something to read, and I had read the rest of the magazine, and I did not want to get up and get something else to read. But the first paragraph immediately drew me in, describing my thoughts exactly. The article is “The Therapy Fund” by Nathanael Schildbach, second heading reading, “The Importance of Place”:

“…When I was a kid, I lived in a relatively new development in Oregon in a town that was rapidly expanding, growing newer by the minute. My frame of reference was things I could remember as a child that were no longer there because they had been replaced by houses or strip malls, and it felt like everything was so new that it had no weight to it. No meaning. It felt like a fake place, planned and manufactured, regardless of how young or old it was. And it seemed like everyone was so focused on moving ‘forward’ that no one bothered to spend much time figuring out where it and we had all come from and, by extension, where the heck we were all going.”

He goes on to compare this “forward” movement—literally—with that of education these days (which I also agree with…that’s another entry), but I would like to stop right there at the end of that paragraph. For those of us that live in the Cary-Apex-Raleigh-Fuquay-Holly Springs-Wake Forest-ish area, doesn’t that just about describe where our cities are? Always concentrated on moving forward, tearing down those meaningless trees in light of something much, much better—town homes, Jared’s Jewelers, or the umpteenth Super Target/and/or/ Wal-Mart shopping center. Yes, you see, the goal of the Triangle area is to make sure that from every Wal-Mart you stand directly outside of, you are sure to clearly see the front signs of at least one other Wal-Mart, like the emergency button stands on State’s campus.

I am tired of all this industrialization. It makes me sick to my stomach. The only good thing to come out of it is TAC. Everything else is garbage to me. Unnecessary. Busy work for all those Mexicans (I’m not being racist; just stating the truth!).

I don’t know why they keep building houses and apartments and town homes here. I wouldn’t want to live in any of them. I prefer the simple life. I just want to go away and live in the country in a big, old farm house; towering oak trees; green, lush, rolling hills; nature, animals and humans all united in a beautiful paradise-like setting. Sure, farm work is romanticized to some degree—isn’t everything? Otherwise, people would be perfectly happy where they were and never give a second thought to living anywhere else. But, seriously. There are things I used to do and appreciated doing that now I cannot do anymore. Simple things—I used to explore in the woods behind our house. Now there are none, and our yard is so terrible and intolerably sunny and boring. On top of that, I have absolutely no privacy outside anymore. There are neighbors everywhere. At least they’re nice. And maybe I’m just self-consciously self-centered or something, but I would like to be able to go outside and lay on in the grass and not feel like people can watch everything I’m doing. I’d rather have some little somewhere where I can be completely alone, or have only my family be able to see me.

If I go in the front yard, people are always driving by, there are people constantly pulling into the next door neighbors’ driveways, and lately there have been construction people across the street re-doing things like roofs and siding and digging sewer-things. In the backyard there is no shade, and we have neighbors living behind us in a very white house that towers above all our little homey houses which were here FIRST, and then the next-door neighbors and…I feel like I can’t turn my back anywhere if I relax on the trampoline…I can’t do ANYTHING ANYWHERE without feeling exposed!!!

It just seems like the town of Cary (NOT CITY [lol]) has something against preserving nature. It loves to destroy God-made beauty and put in the place of it annoying living-places that I’m sure we cannot possibly have enough people moving into from other lands, and annoying shopping-places that I am sure we could not have possibly lived with anything further from all those new places that we live—we might have starved. As if one bloody city needs five million grocery store options, and twenty seven hundred cell phone stores. Whatever happened to going to town, where the market or general store was, buying a few things, and then coming home to eat off the fruit of our labor? What’s wrong with that?

Ugh. I’m just gonna get more riled up. I’ve said my say, now what have you to?

~Jessica