I have been helping once a week at our local farm and been enjoying the experience very much. We have been busy harvesting potatoes and I have enjoyed feeling at ‘one with nature’ once more. It seems so ridiculous, though, that thousands of years ago our ancestors were living a very hand to mouth existence, growing their own fruit and vegetables, and yet now that such ways of living are regarded as the height of luxury… all our striving for modernisation, advances and simplification of life has just left us dreaming of the existence we always had and took for granted.
The recent airing of David Attenborough’s ‘Extinction’ has led, certainly in me, to much questing and soul searching as to what it is humans strive for- what the pinnacle of success is and what it should be. Success, for me, is measured not in how much money you earn or how big your house is, not how many friends you have or how full your diary is. It is rather measured in what you can give to the world rather than take, in the pleasure that can be achieved from the small things in life, the sense of self-fulfilment that can be taken in doing jobs carefully and well and the love you can give to the people and the plants and animals in the world around you.
