As we enter the Dog days we are spending a lot of time harvesting. I find that when I am kneeling at the earth’s alter, my hands busy pulling carrots that will be sauteed in a cast iron skillet until they release sweetness from under their charred exteriors, my brain has time to free-wheel. I feel this same way when I am splitting wood: there is something about repetitive motions, sweating, and the tangible, immediate reward that encourages thoughtful creativity.
Being in the garden made me think about earlier in the summer when our son was here with his daughter for three weeks. While they were here our focus and time belonged to them, giving all of us the chance to slow down for a moment and really talk with each other. It was during a conversation we were having while sitting outside around an evening fire that he spoke about an approach he was going to take with one of the classes he teaches at a college where they live. He had been talking with other professors at the school and they had all been interested in taking a straight-forward, honest approach about the use of phones during lectures. There was the general feeling that students could not be truly present while focusing on their phones. He ran a few approaches by us and it sparked a longer discussion about phones and their use.
Long, long ago, when dinosaurs roamed, Paul and I made the decision not to move from a regular “dumb” phone to a smart phone. We felt that our business required significant use of the internet and when we had the chance to be away from that, we wanted to really be away.
This often provokes more explaining than I am comfortable with. Somehow my having the little black folded-up phone triggers something in people: an ordering-a-salad-at-lunch-with-a-friend- who-is-ordering-a-burger-and-fries kind of trigger. It’s very important for me to respect peoples’ choices as I hope they respect mine. I really don’t care what someone chooses to eat and just hope to be left in peace to wrestle with my lettuce. Same with my phone: I have no ax to grind, I just want to use my phone as a phone and my computer as a computer and because I don’t use one doesn’t mean I can’t. The speed at which technology moves makes this choice more challenging, but certainly not impossible.
The world that we live in seems to spin faster when connected to technology. The tiny bell is a constant reminder that we are on call: there is an impatient expectation associated with that ring. For us, even as people who love our chaotic lives, we need to be able to adjudicate what makes it into our world.
I love to listen to public radio when I’m driving. I try to schedule errands around “Fresh Air.” But, sometimes I miscalculate and it is the daily news I end up listening to. I want to be informed so that I can make decisions that are based in fact: however the fevered pace, the underlying rage of political races, fires, floods, pandemics, racism often leave me unable to breathe and I need to protect myself by shutting it all off. I need to switch off my phone when I am taking a walk with my dogs, or having lunch with a friend or sleeping.
In this moment, we are living history. It is not always glorious and it can feel overwhelming. We have made the choice to insulate our lives and the way we have chosen to live them as an act of self- preservation because, even in the eye of this hurricane, we must, somehow, continue forward.
I had a conversation with our son not long after he returned home from Vermont. The calculated pace of our lives at our home is steady. The reason we came to farming was because the work of farming is predictable and it increases the purposefulness in our lives. After the first few days, our son felt his lungs expand.
Sitting on the deck overlooking the pasture and the garden, writing or reading is slow, you have time to chew on your pen, think, create. Soon the bell that is pulling at you like a dog on a leash is no longer welcome sound but an intrusion of your every thought and it feels better to leave it on the dresser in your bedroom. As we spoke he told me that he was going one step further in talking with his class, he was going to become the example and give up his smart phone. It was clear that he wanted change. It was clear he wanted the bell to stop.
He wants to offer his class and his daughter an example of how to make change. Not to make social comment but to find peace. What he told me was that he did not want to miss a moment of raising his child, he wanted to be truly present in all things.
I felt filled up by what he said, not because I agreed or disagreed with his decision but because I had been able to see his need for change and now he was taking that dog off the leash. Watching someone, but maybe especially your kid, bend their lives in the face of difficulty is transformative.
I know that McDonald’s food isn’t good for me and I make the conscious choice not to eat it, but you would never catch me saying that it isn’t tasty. Smart phones are amazing – they definitely make lives, directions, photographing, and airline travel easier. But we need to remember that, in addition to letting people in at any time, they are also telling and selling us what they want us to know and when they want us to know it.
I love having a flock of sheep. I think I prefer not to be one.