A Tiny Farewell

He had always wondered if this day would come. Six years ago, he’d moved off grid into this tiny house to get away from all the restrictions of modern life.

Back then, as he’d made his preparations, he couldn’t believe how excited he was to get away from it all. He hadn’t even felt a bit of nostalgic hesitation. He was over his girlfriend - they saw the world so differently. She had bought in completely to the cookie cutter “normal” life that made him feel so trapped - go to the same job every day, buy a house, pay property tax and health insurance, get married, have 2.1 kids, go to Target once a week for groceries and splurge on entertainment and distraction with the rest of your money.

He was over his job, social media, keeping up with what he was supposed to know about what was happening culturally and trend-wise and halfway across the world. And he had felt so harried and rushed in the middle of a city and world going at breakneck speed, in circles, it often felt like.

So he’d bought the tiny house, bought a plot of land, and taken a leap of faith with his meager savings.

At first, it had been such a huge learning curve he hadn’t even had time to think about whether he was enjoying himself. When the first winter storm came and his firewood got soggy, he felt desperately alone and uncared for.

But gradually - as he got used to and even started to relish his new routine, he had felt himself open in a beautiful way, like a flower blooming. He had found ideas starting to come to mind - realized his own answers to philosophical and moral quandaries he’d been stumped by, like whether or not to go vegetarian - he had started to write stories and notice very small details, like the etchings on a leaf from local bug and animal life, and the tiny details of the ever-moving sky, here just for a moment, darkening, lightening, filling and emptying.

He had written and written. Letters to friends and family, after some time even to friends he had lost touch with - knowing his letters may go to an old address and never reach their intended recipients, but feeling deeply that the magic was in the writing itself. He wrote essays on his life, articles on society, and he even began to submit the best of these for publication, driving an hour to the closest library and using the internet there to upload what he’d written. He began to feel grounded in himself, in who he was, in what he believed, and in his ability to live a simple, full life, light on the land and in harmony with the beauty around him. Nature was particularly moving. He sometimes found himself in tears over the miracle of the living environment he called his “neighborhood”.

So he was surprised, six years on, to have suddenly felt a change.

He felt the solidness of a tree inside himself now - he knew who he was, what he stood for, what brought him joy, and he was fully self reliant - a total change from his earlier self that felt so stuck and confused. He thought that this was the point of life - to know and become yourself fully. But all of a sudden he realized there was something more.

He wanted to go back to it all. To sail the seas of life in community, in society as it exists. He was curious about technology & its advancements, and he was equally curious about what was happening in the world and whether his insights and efforts could make a difference. He realized - he wanted to give of himself. Even more than just through his writing.

What he would do, how he would live, was a big question mark. He knew he would not be in a high rise in the center of a city. Perhaps a small place just outside town, with a big patio. And perhaps he could find a permanent writing job. But even if he weren’t able to create the exact circumstances he wanted, he realized, it would still be worth it - to explore, to be with, to learn, and to see who he was drawn to, who was drawn to him, now that he was so much more fully himself. He wanted to live an adventure - to grow even more than you ever can alone - and to participate in creating the circumstances that shape all our lives.

After a few weeks’ preparation, he put out an ad for the tiny home. A young woman desperate to get out of a bad living situation reached out to him. He called her, and they spoke for several hours. She was willing to do everything it took - all the manual labor, all the planning and sacrificing of conveniences - to experience the glories of that life of solitude and freedom. He drove into the city and dropped the keys into her hand. “No charge,” he said, and drove into the town square to people watch for a few hours.

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