A Humble Life Can Still Be Had

One of the hardest things about returning to society after the loss was that I thought I had gleefully and permanently walked away from it a handful of years before. Kara and I had purposefully turned our backs on everything about the modern world that we no longer wished to endeavor, and we couldn’t have been happier about it.

Then I was relegated to an existential walk of shame back into the former fold. Yes, I was primarily and overwhelmingly mourning the loss of Kara and everything else. But having to reintegrate into the current version of civilization after thriving in its absence was the bitter icing on my layer cake of depression.

I don’t know if I would consider myself a true, according to Hoyle, minimalist. But I certainly abide by certain aspects. Years before moving off-grid, I had adopted the “You don’t own things, things own you” mantra with regard to worldly possessions.

I also left the corporate world to pursue a career in which the metrics for success were measured in degrees of soul satisfaction. My goal was to derive happiness and contentment from simple pleasures and some basic concepts and tenets of humanity.

I tried my best to engage the world with honesty and integrity, and focused on loving well, doing unto others, and on down the line. However, I don’t know if all of that goes with being a minimalist, so much as what I considered just being a good man leading a humble life. And for me, for us, that life was most comfortably lived away from the fray, out in the woods, and on our own terms.

Reintegration has been incremental but steady. That property is what finally got me to understand that the more I look and listen, the more I’m shown and told. I strongly believe that living off the grid is what armed me with the tools to utilize nature for healing when I needed it most.

Ironically, those years spent growing to understand and synchronize with a precious parcel of land are what ultimately helped me survive the loss of it. And to know that an incarnation of the humble life I had and still crave is as attainable as I allow it to be.