What One Family In A Suburban Area Can Teach You About Living The Good Life

Living The Good Life

I just finished reading Living the good life by Linda Cockburn.

Living sustainably is my dream. I love gardens, I love plants and I love the natural lives.
It is amazing how powerful the mother nature can be. Every time I sow tiny seeds in my backyard, my heart gets excited for the future to come. I’m always impressed with the vitality of the tiny seeds. Such a small existence knows how to root itself on the ground to survive and thrive. Eventually it gives us humans energy as food. Watching the plants grow gives me the power of life and makes me realize how far human being has came from such a basic living mechanism. We are now used to ‘buy’ food at the shop. All the effort and energies behind what’s behind the food have been forgotten. We are getting more greedy about the benefits of our sake, destroying the Environment to create more food than we can possibly consume, transporting products way too far to pollute the air, chemicals and more-than-necessarily-water to produce food out of season which are rather tasteless and less nutritious.

Linda and her family took a challenge to change their world from their own backyard. They called it an Adventure. They tried to go six months without spending a dollar. Linda’s book was different to other sustainable living books because the book focused on the life of the everyday normal family like us and the Environment around them. Instead of specifying how you can implement the practices, it talked about how the family actually did, how they dealt with the ways they chose to live their lives and all emotional, mental and physical effects the family experienced.

Growing own food and caring for the environment certainly play a role in the book but it expands the focus on how they thrive in the adventure in terms of social aspects, suburban environment, finance, relationship, caring for animals and in many more dimensions that every family faces in the today’s world. Reading the book felt a lot like reading how a basic human lifestyle goes through a fundamental environment. Lots of unexpected and uncontrollable natural events and how they accept and appreciate them to adapt in the given situation.

To my own surprise, the family didn’t feel the way they lived was uncomfortable or inconvenient. The year the adventure was implemented unluckily recorded one of the lowest rainfall years. It impacted severely on their ability to produce food for themselves and for their animals. Even though the official duration of the adventure was over, they chose to continue the way they live because that’s how they live life and what they feel normal. If you really think about it, that’s what most people do today, we live in a way that we feel normal.

I wonder how many people continue their lifestyle knowing that’s not the right way but feel normal? Lots. This scary trend has been invading our ability to live life sustainably. Linda’s story made it compelling because the family with no practical experience like most of us chose to live a simple life.

The most important unit known o man, that of energy - not currency

There are a few very significant points from Linda’s story as a normal family that connect to all of us, no matter what we do, where we live.

Although Linda’s family is creative to make something useful out of what most people see as waste, it’s obvious that the success of their adventure is because they recognize how unethical the modern human life has become.

There is no doubt that humans are intelligent animals. We have developed technologies and devices to make our life easier, saving time and energy. But on the other side, we had been almost blind to what effects the development has brought to this planet. Overpopulation, excess CO2 emission, wasting drinking water down the drain… a lot of people don’t even think about those effects. We might have gained more freedom and options to live our life comfortably, but we are actually creating more negatives than positives in the today’s lifestyle. If I put this in extreme terms, we are gradually killing ourselves.

Recognizing our current lifestyle is a good start to make changes. The sustainable living might not be for everyone but each of us can start from something small, even with your own walking feet. I found Linda’s story motivating because of the ordinariness of her family. There is nothing so different from my family that prevents me challenging the adventure. It made me to want to take the adventure too.

Feeling empowered

The book says this on the very last page:

Don’t feel overwhelmed, don’t feel guilty, don’t feel you need perfect knowledge, a lot of money or heaps of time.
All that does is compound the problem and stops you from

feeling empowered.

Your actions will not save the world.
Who cares, it was never the goal. It’s about doing the things that are within your power to do. That;s all you can do.
Don’t think of it as an obligation, think of it as an adventure.

I love how she put this. It’s so true. There might not be much that a single family in a suburban area can do to save the world, but we all can do things that are within our power to do. We don’t need perfect knowledge, we don’t need lots of money. Think about the true values within us. Of course you can choose to ignore it, which certainly causes more problems and ends up you facing what you don’t like or what doesn’t benefit you. Taking the risk is all up to you.

If you are keen on the Environment or growing your own food, I recommend you to check out Living The Good Life.

Linda Cockburn and her family on TV show