I Want to Move to the Mountains.

     I want to move to the mountains.  Why not?  Move to the mountains, get out of cell phone service, away from traffic, away from the craziness that has become our modern western life, be alone with the trees.  Sounds good to me.

     The start of a college semester is always a stressful period of time for me, but for some reason, this time around, I have felt so impressed that so much of the stress I feel is unnecessary stress.  Man-made stress.  I have been looking around me in my classes to see a sea of worried, stressed out faces, watching people walk across campus with their eyes glued to their phones (only when mine aren't glued to mine), talking to people who seem to take pride in the business and craziness that is their life, and I have been wishing to scream, "PLEASE JUST STOP!  SLOW DOWN!" to the entire country.  The chorus of Jack Johnson's "Inaudible Melodies" has been running through my mind on repeat....

Slow down everyone you're moving too fast,
Frames can't catch you when you're moving like that.  

     Today in one of my classes, a girl told me that she is taking 19 credits and working 40 hours a week.   She looked at me with an expecting expression...I could tell she was used to people being impressed by that.  Of course, in a way, I was totally impressed...mostly because I know that I couldn't do that without having a mental break down...but it also made me kind of sad.  How does she have time for anything that really matters?  Work and school are vital, I know, but what about people?  What about spending time meditating on things that matter?  Having a conversation with God that isn't rushed?  Sitting down for dinner with people you love? Going for darn a walk?  I would bet she doesn't even have time to evaluate her life and how she's doing things, she only has time to go, go, go.  Is this the only kind of living we admire?  The only sense of accomplishment we value?  Running ourselves ragged doing a million meaningless things?  I just don't want to live like that.

     Generally, we are all expected to grow up and work a minimum of forty hour work weeks (a culturally established expectation), raise kids, participate in extra curricular activities, and be active members of our community.  To some level, if we want to have a positive impact on the world, we do need to be part of it.  But I just don't think we all need to be taking 19 credit hours and working 40 hours a week.  I just don't think it has to be like that.  In Europe, I've heard, they only work like six months out of the year, or something like that.  I'm not sure if that's true, but I at least know that in many places in Europe, they take a break for nap time in the afternoon.  The way we generally do life here is not the only possible way to do life.  A lot of what we do and what we expect out of ourselves come from culturally established expectations...not necessarily what is right and wrong.

     At some point, if we want to live deliberately and not just passively (by passively I mean that we are allowing the structure of our culture to make our decisions for us), we are going to have to sit down and decide what really matters to us, in spite of what the people around us are doing.  We need to go back to basics and decide which things are non-compromise-able.  To start, we might ask ourselves, what does my soul need in order to thrive?  What do my relationships need in order to thrive?  Some things that come to mind for me are family time, time with friends, family dinner, scripture study, prayer, temple attendance, time to relax, time to be in nature, etc.  In my opinion, if we are succeeding in our non-compromise-ables, we have already gained success....all of the other fluff that our modern busy lives demand of us aren't essential, it's just fluff.

     None of us are perfect.  All of us are learning. In yoga, I like to emphasize the fact that this is a practice...and practices leave room for falling over.  In my mind, so does life.  Life is a practice which we must perform with an eye of faith, believing that tomorrow we will be better than we are today.  We don't need to place the pressure of perfection on our shoulders....only a constant desire for gradual improvement is necessary.  I'm not suggesting that all of us quit our jobs, drop out of school, and move to the mountains.  I believe that we can find a balance between slowing down and living productive, successful lives.  I just hope we can be a little more patient with ourselves, refocus, and find ways to slow down, even if only for a moment.  Maybe a trip to the mountains wouldn't be so bad, either.

Thanks for reading! :)

Namaste,

Kristy