A life worth loving.. is a life worth living

[Nain Dejardin]

Greetings!

Due to unplanned but much needed change in my life.. I have been given a fresh start.

I met someone who truly thinks I am an amazing person and encourages me to become better still. Through this change of perspective, I have been allowed to pursue the tings that I am passionate about. During the course of finding out what those things are... I have discovered that I am passionate about life and living it to the fullest. Also, making my life affect others in a positive way and creating momentum in my sphere of influence.
I discovered an amazing radio program called "De-constructing Dinner" that opened my eyes to the reality of things such as the food market system, mono-culture farming, GMOs, food security, sustainability, permaculture etc... and something inside me "switched on".
Throughout the years I had developed such selfish practices in regards to food, energy and finances that I became a "salve to the grind". I wasn't realizing any sort of satisfaction out of life.. only a "trapped" feeling in my current situation.
I started becoming a very "do it yourself" person. My hobbies became little obsessions.. making my own beer, digging up my lawn to allow room for productive crops, to most recently, constructing a greenhouse and adding permaculture philosophy and techniques to my life.
I no longer feel trapped. In fact, I feel a need to free as many people as I can from their self-centeredness (not that is really their fault but a reaction to the way things are in our current culture).

So... I found this forum today and I want to glean from the countless real experiences and apply as many solutions as possible to my life so that other may see how simple it is to live a life worth living. I can take criticism.. and I can give it also. Through relationships across political and religious boundaries.. we will see positive change and freedom.

[sun burn]

Hello Nain

Where are you from. Can you please add it to your profile so that it shows up in all your posts. It helps people answer your questions better. Most people here are aussies so please keep that in mind when you write where you are from. WA won't cut it if you are from Washington for example, since WA is also Western Australia.

I also like and try to remember the Sphere of Influence principle. It is a very good one." I feel a need to free as many people as I can from their self-centeredness" but this is where we have to be careful that our enthusiasm doesn't turn us into zealots because such people are utterly painful and can do more harm than good if they don't have the foundations of influence. But i am also prone to a bit of evangelism so its a factor that i must not forget about. Perhaps I got the wrong idea form your post but what is your method of freeing people from their selfishness? Permies are inclined to being a little smug and superior as you will see if you read some of the threads around here, so we should take care to avoid this.

I love your enthusiasm and its great to see that you have transformed your life.

[ecodharmamark]

G'day Joshua

Welcome to the PRI Forum (and the 'good life' in general, it would seem).

Feel very free to search (top, right-hand corner) for any topic/s that you may be interested in.

Cheerio, Markos

[Nain Dejardin]

sun burn - I feel you may have read more into my post than I intended. I am an opinionated person and that can make me sound a little smug at times.. but the truth is I am so full of a love for life and people that I rarely come across that way in person. Keep my posts in context and you will find I am a very understanding person as well. By +freeing as many people as I can from their self-centeredness (that might not even be a real word) + I am not suggesting that I am going to ram "compost" down everyone's throats. If you had kept the next line in context with this one, you may have understood that I am going to "lead by example"

As people, we do tend to beat everyone up with our ideologies. It seems to be in our nature. It also seems to be a result of our insecurities. We feel that other's differing opinions contradict our own thus invalidating things that we form all our decisions and perspectives around. This makes us feel vulnerable, like either other's need to conform to our doctrines.. or vice versa. The truth is, I don't believe we can change anyone on this planet except for our selves. Even our family dynamics and goals are affected by more than one opinion and need to be adjusted to compensate. I went to church for a long time and saw first hand how effective "fire and brimstone" evangelism works... and I avoid it at any cost.

At this point I have gotten one neighbor to start composting all of his lawn clippings... not because a sense of responsibility to the earth (yet ;)) but because he needed a better solution that curbside pick up or having to go to the landfill every week. I don't really care what the actual reason he chooses to compost.. the most important thing to me is that all that precious material is being added back into the soil. How did I get him to start? When I started digging up my lawn, I asked everyone on my block to dump their lawn clipping on my front yard for a full summer so that I could really get a good start on a healthy, nutrient rich soil for the beginning of my garden. Lot's of people thought I was batty... but they all still watched... some gave me their clippings.. then the next year they got to watch my potato crop grow like a forest in my front yard... people started stopping by when I was in my garden to ask questions or to comment on my "yard under construction" or to ask "what is that beautiful flower?"... now I have dialogue, respect and a sense of community starting in a suburb where people don't usually talk to each other.

Back to my "self-centeredness" comment.. I hope I have clarified my position on such a harsh observation. But I do feel that any person that takes and takes.. purely for self gain or appetite without consideration of a "re-investment" is selfish. But like anyone that is caught in this sort of behavior, they probably don't view it that way. It is up to us to show them the light (not that the sun shines out of our behinds) but the reality of what we CAN do and what we can collectively gain from it. This is simliar in my opinion to the big Pharma corporations, GMO seed companies, the Oil industry, the food market system.. all these entities, in their current state.. simply take as much as they can from the earth and the people that live on it without a consideration of how we can better steward our resources, or empowering citizens to become self-sufficient. If they did.. they would hurt their business.. and that is not good business. I can see how it is a result of a limited viewpoint and not necessarily all greed.. but a lot of it IS greed.

So, we as a band of "smug" permaculturists.. in order to truly affect change.. must be approachable, realistic, genuine and above all.. full of integrity. It's not my neighbor's fault that he consumes and adds to an exponential problem... it is my fault if I do not demonstrate how we can meet our own needs and benefit life as a whole.

Thanks for the welcome! I will be looking for more of your input in the future!

ecodharmamark - thanks for the tip and the welcome!

Have a great day!