Simplifying life...

Today at work I visited an island and learned how to hunt for food, build a house and make bows and arrows. You know, in between checking people in and out of the hotel. I was transported into the book, Island of the Blue Dolphins. I'm in the process of waiting for three new books on hold at the library and in the mail from amazon, so I picked this one up as an "in the meantime" read. It was one of my few favorite summer reading books from school, and I've been wanting to experience it again. Plus, I want to try and read a little from different genres to help me figure out what I want to write. Anyway, as I was reading the main character, Karana's, account of her days alone on the island, it struck me how straightforward life is. Her days consisted of waking up with the sun, bathing in the stream, finding her breakfast of quail eggs and seeds, spending her afternoon hunting her dinner- usually fish and abalone, eating, and watching the ocean as she fell asleep. It was good to read about how life is supposed to be. Simple. You do what you need to survive, and beyond that, you just enjoy life.

It seemed peaceful to me. Then I fast-forwarded for a moment to the life we lead today. Almost nothing we do, no action we take, has a direct consequence anymore. Karana hunted her food and then ate it. Today our meals come from a seemingly endless chain of people and companies that we have no interaction with. We just pick it up. Karana built her home. Today most of us have no idea how to lay a foundation or build a frame for a house. Instead, we pay people to do it or buy it prefabricated. Karana fought the wild dogs for survival. Today, we fear no animal other than ourselves.

Maybe if we had a closer connection to our own survival we would understand the purpose of life better. But, when all these other things get in the way, it's hard to see what's really important.


A Simple Kind of Life.