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Minimalism | Letting Go | Mental Health
Letting Go of Things Leads to Letting Go of a Lot More
We aren’t attached to very much these days
In January of 2017, I watched the documentary Minimalism on Netflix. I had an ‘aha moment’ as I realized that the things I had accumulated over my life were the exact things that were holding me back from living my dreams. This began nine months of selling, donating and getting rid of a house full of stuff, plus closing down two home-based businesses and selling our house and vehicles so we could attempt to travel full-time.
We spent six years being full-time nomadic travelers and learned a lot about ourselves and the world throughout the process. But one thing that stands out above the rest is that we are excellent at letting things go these days.
But letting ‘things’ go is just the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the process of this lifestyle, I have realized that we let a lot more than just things go, and this story is just one more example of that.
A few weeks ago, as the pea flowers in our garden were starting to come into bloom, the owner of the farm where we are staying warned us that the deer like them. We are gardening in her mom’s former plot, which hasn’t been used in 16 years.
“Mom lost her pea flowers to the deer on more than one occasion.” She warned us.
She has been marveling at our peas over the last month. They have grown taller than me now, and in comparison to hers, they are like giant redwood trees. She told me that she had never seen peas get so big.
Her suggestion was to purchase some blood meal to sprinkle on the ground around them. The scent of the blood will, theoretically, keep the deer away.
Thankfully, we have only seen deer in the area of the garden on one occasion this year, and that was back when we had just planted seeds. I yelled at them from the kitchen window and they took off — we haven’t seen them since.
