Touch Grass

The world has gotten so small and so connected that we find out about too many bad things. Making it seem like a harder place than it is. We need to touch grass. Telling someone to touch grass means that they have lost touch with how the world works and how people behave. They need to get off of the internet and take part in normal activities in real life. To go outside and enjoy nature. Actually, touch grass if it has been a while. With their bare feet if at all possible. This is all second nature for country folk because country life is outdoor life. Rural culture grows out of people's relationship to the land.

If you have been reading me for any length of time you will have realized I am in favor of people moving to the country. But one of the worst things you can do to yourself or to a place is to bring your old life with you. Spending all your time indoors, not present in the community. Commuting to work and shop and socialize. Living the same lifestyle only in a different place. That is not country life at all. It is exurbia. An exurb is a residential community full of well-to-do families which is urban dependent. It is what happens when remote workers and commuters flood an area pricing locals out of it. While also taking their commerce elsewhere leading to a hollowing out of the economic base. In short, the worst of both worlds.

The lure of stimulation online or from the pace of urban life is little more than seeking dopamine from novelty. It severs us from the rhythm of living because there is no dawn or dusk online while cities run 24 hours a day to the antagonizing hum of sodium vapor lights. But the nature pill is potent. Watching the changing of the seasons and feeling grounded by knowing you are subject to it. Letting go of the need to achieve in favor of the need to be warm and fed. It was easy to be transactional with the anonymity of a million faces, but small towns have long memories. So, you get real, or you do not get far. But when you do you feel less isolated around fewer people and there is no contradiction if you think about it. You touched grass.

A while back I heard about something called 1,000 Hours Outside. A movement to get people to spend 1,000 hours outside in a year. That is about 2 hours and 45 minutes a day or 20 hours a week. Its purpose is to replace screen time with time in nature. With much more touching grass. It is crazy. In a good way. So, I have decided to give it a try. As someone who sits at a desk 8-10 hours a day 5 days a week and half that on Saturday, I will have to be intentional. But it is an undertaking worthy of a Country Gentleman. You need to romanticize your life. Not your future plans, or what you wish it would be. But your everyday life right now as you are living it. I do too.