Real Life

Mike has been furloughed from his job for a little while now, and I have been soaking it in while I can because I like when he is around more, and it is only a short time before he will be back to work. We spend most of our time together watching t.v., going places, or just hanging out together. Also, this year we have been working to improve our yard just a bit. We hired some guys to pull out the bushes and small trees along the side of the driveway, and just that small step makes things look about 100 times better. We have also been buying a few plants to put in the front yard, and have been "trying" to keep the weeds under control. I say trying because short of having a small army of gardeners at my disposal, there is no real way of controlling all the weeds. All in all, I am feeling a little better about the yard than I have in the past, and I am enjoying having a project to work on with my Love.

Doesn't it seem like you can often get a feel for something or someplace by watching a show about it or reading about it? At least that's how I tend to feel when I am in the midst of a good book or enthralled by a documentary. But more often than not, when I actually experience something in real life, I get a completely different feeling than if I were learning about from my own home. It's kind of like the difference between reading a letter from someone and talking to them in person. Both can be very interesting and fulfilling actions, but one can scarcely begin to compare to the other. They both give you very different feelings.

A lot of people (including me), tend to prefer experiencing things from their homes. After all, home is where we feel safe and comfortable and free to be ourselves and make mistakes. But there's a catch to learning about the world this way. We are not really experiencing anything. We are only seeing a shadow of the full picture; a dull impression of the richness of color and feeling that comes from experiencing first-hand. When we choose to watch instead of do, we lose a part of our vitality. We accept a life that is only a fraction of what it could be, and we start to accept only written facts over our own feelings and intuitions.

I'm not one to say that reading and learning from books and computers is not important. The fact that we can understand language and complex ideas is part of what makes us human. But another (maybe even more important) part of being human is getting out and experiencing things for yourself and feeling the full range of emotions that come from that. Because without doing more than skimming the surface of our humanity, we are little better than our books and computers.