Freeconomy Blog
Sat
14 Feb
A day in the money-free life...
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Whenever people ask me about how my year is going – whether it be people I meet, media folk or through comments on this blog – it always takes a very negative tone, as if they were sympathising with me and wanted to know my troubles.
I sometimes wonder why people default onto the negative when they speak to me about it. “Are you cold? You must be hungry? You know you can stop at any time, don't continue if it is too hard” is a fairly typical start to any conversation I seem to have these days. No one ever asks, “How liberating is it? or “Is this way of life as beautiful and fulfilling as you imagined?!”
Is it out of a very genuine concern for my well-being? Or out of a lack of understanding about the whole subject? Or is it a mechanism to that people use to reassure themselves that this way of life is arduous at best, or even impossible, and that they are correct in living with all the modern conveniences, and that I am simply a Luddite who wants us all to go backwards and live really dour lives? Sometimes it is a mix of all three, sometimes maybe just one of the above, but its always well intentioned regardless.
In order to dispel such myths though, I want to write a little about my day yesterday, what I would class as just an ordinary run-of-the-mill day. Just as Henry D. Thoreau, in his masterpiece 'Walden – or life in the woods', once wrote “I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbours up”.
I arose at 6am to the brief sound of a cock crowing, intermittently entertained by what seemed like a song contest between various species of bird as they too start their day. Inspired by their example, I have a sing and a dance alone by myself, too far from everyone else to look or sound foolish. Whilst eating my oats I read my
oaths, a list of things in my little notepad that remind me what is important in life. As the sun shows her lovely face a bit more, I do some writing, on paper made from mushrooms which I will later type up on computer. Warm clothes on, I go off to collect some water both for myself and my sprouts, whom I feel a bit bad about fooling into sending up some shoots doomed for my stomach.
Off I go to pick some Jew's ears mushrooms off a bit of deadwood I felled the previous day, and I cannot explain to you how happy it makes me – they are my substitute for meat, the texture is excellent, much better that those Cheatin' chicken slices you find in the shops. Now the souls of my dead friends, the red-breasted robins, are up and come over for a quick chat. As the sink thaws I wash my dishes and clothes, overlooking the snow-covered hills of the valley, just before the cars wake up. Now ahead of myself, I give myself another twenty minutes of reading in bed before taking off to the farm house to see what work needs doing today, remembering to put my solar jars and charger out. I stop off at my gym (aka. a breeze block I use as a weight) en route and get the circulation going for twenty minutes.
Because of the snow we haven't begun planting yet, so it is some more tree coppicing so we can get some wood in to dry and get the hazel to throw some more shoots up. Sometimes it feels like I am helping amputate the leg of a dear friend, but its all for the good of the hedge rows we tell ourselves, such is the controlled world I find myself in.
Feeling healthy after a good morning’s wood lumping, I take off to prepare my skipped, foraged and bartered lunch, all free as nature intended. Modern world reminds me it is still around and off I go to administer this web-site and get stuck into replying to as many emails I can during the time it takes to digest my food.
Another few hours on the farm – this time removing the white blanket from the soil where this autumns food is going to be – and it is time for a nice hot meal. I always plan this so it coincided with the moonrise, which yesterday came over the horizon at the east, bigger than I've ever seen the sun, and golden to boot. I break up my kindling as I watch it come up, before firing up my rocket stove with the days veggies on top. Being rather cold out I retreat to my shelter and get the wood-burner going, to which I put my feet up whilst eating dinner and reading Vinoba Bhave's 'Moved by Love'.
I write as I digest, and once my gut has done it's thing I hook up my trailer to my bike and go off to get whatever food or wood I need for the next few days or week. I am in luck, if there is such a thing, and return home contented and tired, ready to get into bed and watch the remaining embers glow in the burner, do some more writing and drift off into the deepest of sleeps, moon beaming down at me through the gap I carefully placed in the curtains.
Of course some days are really difficult and stressful, as I can no longer buy my way out of trouble, but other days are even more relaxing and enjoyable than above. But it is real – our ‘comforts’ distract us from what we really are.
Contrary to popular opinion, money-free living really is not about going backwards – everything in Nature goes forward in circles and spirals, and seamlessly at that. Think about it – every night evolves into day and back into night, every year winter seamlessly evolves into spring and autumn back into winter. The planets are spherical, and we orbit the sun and the moon orbits us. You can take this down to the atomic level. Everything in nature is made up of cycles, circles, orbits and spirals.
What I am doing is no different. I am moving forwards as we all are, but as we are always moving in natures cycles, we inevitably move back to almost the same point we started out at, just as if we were to sail around the earth. Once you understand this you realise there is no backwards, it just seems so to those who don't understand the cycles of life. In the process though we have the chance to learn so much, and continue on the spiral, near where we once started, but from a much more educated place.
We thought owning lots of material things would make us happy. What we didn't bank on was the fact we'd be have to work incredibly hard to pay the large high interest loans we took out to pay for it. We asked ourselves that if money equals happiness, why have depression, suicide, crime and stress-related diseases such as cancer and heart attacks increased dramatically per head of the population? And why is it so difficult to find a clean river, why do so many have asthma, and where has all the green gone?
If you want me to tell you that living without money is some sort of chain I carry around my neck, some sort of pain I must go through in order to 'do the right thing', then I am sorry to disappoint. Yes it has it's challenges, of course it does. But isn't spending 30 years paying back a mortgage challenging? Is spending all your life working really hard to pay back all the loans that paid for the things you don't get much time to use anymore challenging?
Slavery was never abolished, it just took a more subtle form. And if I have to choose between slavery and freedom, give me the latter any day. But are masters are not those who wear suits and tell us how much we owe – they are the demons within, the ego that tells us we need to keep consuming in order to be socially acceptable. If we realised that our identity does not come from the brands we wear but who we really are, we would likely be free tomorrow.
Mankind lived without money and one day She will do again. Such is the Nature of this world we live in.
THE FREECONOMY BLOG is written by Mark Boyle, founder member of The Freeconomy Community. If you want to respond, debate or ask questions, please just comment below; you will have to sign in first.
Comment on this Post:
Robert Howes comments ...
I wish you well Mark, I'm off out to continue building my hundred ton stone wall now that the fifty ton wall is finished. Maybe I'll respond to your blog later.
Bye for now,
Bob
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Fergus comments ...
I just love the insight at the beginning of this blog, and laugh to myself as I'm sure I've asked after you in such negative and unreflective default mode ways!
Poor Mark; I hope he's not suffering too much? Right, must go and switch the heating on and so some spin drying.......
x
