Picking berries is my meditation
tsoon.com
tsoon.com
Otherwise, I enjoy flower farming and grow about 1/2 acre of flowers and sell wholesale. Close second. Sometimes it is stressful in the midst of July/August weeds but then once you come out the other side, it’s all worth it.
That's easily the most awesome thing I've read on the Internet today!
...how do your neighbors feel about it?
reminds me of discovering minecraft for the first time a long time ago
I used to enjoy 18 hour flights to Asia pre-WiFi for true disconnection, plus time zone difference to US East Coast made the time spent on the ground there feel at least half disconnected
Picking currants? I dread that every year. Same with the raspberries and the cherries and ... It's a chore, I really don't like it at all. Especially having to make sure there's no little green stem left on the currants. That work drives me nuts. Only thing worse is puzzles.
The more interesting thing is the use of "exoskeleton" type tools like excavators , automobiles, or even things like forks. Our brains basically consider them an extension of our body once we learn to use them. Fascinating stuff!
Most of us spend our work time balancing 100 different things, putting out fires, bouncing between meetings, answering adhoc pings via calls/zooms/slacks, and struggling to do the deep work we are allegedly paid for in between.
There's a therapeutic aspect to certain kinds of physical hobby/chore work or full focussed hobbyist time that counterbalances this.
Otherwise at the end of a day of being burned out, we ruminate & doom scroll which only makes things worse.
I see this mimicking of capitalism as a depressing attempt to be in control. A re-expression of the power dynamic.
This is just my opinion.
If you're growing edible stuff, you need to remove the weed in many parts of the world otherwise you won't have any vegetables eventually as the weeds will overgrow everything else. You also don't want something you cannot eat to take nutrients and sun from what you can eat.
Just because the suits took a metaphor from gardening doesn't mean you have to think like the suits, maybe you want to liberate yourself from the kind of dehumanizing thinking where capitalism rather than nature is the central frame of reference.
It's so much nicer to enjoy a car free path, where you don't have the sounds, smells and brake dust to breath from cars. More trees on a path than a road.
I am a good cyclist, I ride in downtown Toronto, but if I want to space out and let my mind really wander, a path is orders of magnitude better than a actual road.
There is no benifit to navigating traffic and risking injury. More relax and free to stop or slow and take notes.
There is nothing better about being on a road with cars vs, in a nice park or path.
Wait until you hear about hunting!
Way to ruin something good .
Not everyone shares your opinion that what needs to be done for you to eat meat, is fine only so long as you can pay someone else to do it for you.
Commenting about slaughtering animals for entertainment in a thread about picking berries is crass to the point of revulsion.
You can fish for sport, or for food, or you can have fun/sport fishing for food.
The thread wasn't about picking berries, it was about harvesting food from nature:
> it's a marvelous thing for food to just be out there in the wild for the taking.
Your personal insecurities and hangups about exposure to where your food comes from doesn't make shooting, cleaning, and eating a deer irrelevant. There's a reason grocery stores exist, it's so that.people like you don't need to think about cleaning meat, but that doesn't mean others can't discuss it.
If this bothers you so much, you might enjoy spending time instead on facebook or reddit, where you can easily ensure you are not exposed to concepts you personally find revolting.
Ever wonder how Nixon was able to establish the EPA and sign into law the clean air act, the clean water act, the marine mammal protection act, the legacy of parks program, and the endangered species act when the green movement was (and is) mostly associated with left-leaning activists? Hunters. They were a big part of the conservative base and provided cover for Nixon and his conservation efforts.
Owls spit out roughly one pellet a day.
Meditating on what this means will bring you closer to nature, although one of the primary benefits of this closeness tends to be gratitude that we can engage with nature on our own terms.
When I’m on a long, multi hour gravel bike ride - I usually don’t listen to music - just the sounds of world around me and let my mind freely wander. As my mind wanders it finds the tough emotional pieces I haven’t yet processed and starts chipping away at them. Sometimes I end up crying quite hard depending on what my mind has decided to work through. I’m sure I look like a maniac to whatever farmers I’m passing by.
Fly fishing on the other hand is less emotionally intense and much more calming. The dull roar of the river, the intense focus on the water - trying to spot the fish movements within it, trying to identify the tiny bug life around me so I can better select a fly, the focus on placing my fly and my line precisely where I want it. The rhythmic casting, mending, and recasting. Finding constant balance as you wade across uneven river beds. It’s a rare thing where I can fully silence my mind but it’s easy to do when fly fishing. It’s like a deep reprieve from the otherwise constant chatter of thinking - just calm and serene.
For me it's loading and unloading the dishwasher. I hated it, still do, but if I'm careful to approach it with a very delicate kind of focus I can lose myself in the deep mysteries of the task.
> doing something is not meditation.
so usually those conversations end with a "hm yes that's nice too"
It is ok to be focused and mindful with different aids. Always has been. There are self focused (mindful) and also self-abnegating traditions, and all count.
No harm to.me if others have a different way. If music, or chants, or gardening, have at it.
I wish that meditation experts would either dumb things down better or not try at all.
I’d be careful about talking about “the point” of meditation.
Life seems a bit better after a long walk preferably somewhere nice
With small kids, these sort of lazy tasks bring out focus, physical awareness and exploration. Living in the city, these are valuable respites from chaos and noise.
I hated having to do this a s a child. When I returned home after being away for quite a while, I picked up just to reduce mom's burden.
Then I found myself actually wanting to do it, just for the mental space it gives. The sense of cleanliness you get adds to the quality of the experience.
Same feeling as well a well optimized hot path.
Our ancestors picked berries to survive, we pick them for quiet time. It's damn good to live in the future.
But I entirely understand the idea and support that.
In my experience, there are two approaches:
1. Freestyle: I try not to steer anything; just the mind is flowing.
2. Focusing on here and now: I try to focus on the present moment.
Here are my ideas:
1. Wandering in the woods/park without the phone and counting backwards from 50 to 1 over and over again, or focusing on the present experience (noticing people, nature, and other stuff without judgements, just the observation).
2. The same as above but with the phone + recording voice memos. Sometimes, it's over 30 minutes long voice memos :-) Saying things out loud have more power than just thinking about that. It makes that happen, real and physical.
3. Swimming in the pool, counting strokes, breaths, pools swum, etc.
It’s been said over and over but they never reveal the deepest truth. We should all be picking berries all the time but we can’t because capitalism steals our time and wealth and makes us suffer.
I mean, can you deny that’s what he’s saying here? “I find it more pleasurable picking berries than writing code or working in a coffee shop or yada yada yada?”
Having to pick berries is not.
I have done both throughout my life. I can assure you very few engineers would prefer to be out in a field in the sun or rain working 16 hour days in harvest season to get the berries in before they rot.
And that goes as much for wild berry picking for sustenance, sustenance farming, homesteading, or commercial farming.
I love my little garden. It’s zen for me to be out there trimming, doing soil amendments, picking fruit, etc. I also worked on my parents 2 acre garden that sustained the household (and later sold at market). I highly prefer my easy white collar job to that.
So yeah, I do deny what he’s saying there. I enjoyed programming for fun way more than gardening for survival. Just like I enjoy gardening for fun way more than engineering for survival. The latter scenario is preferable to the former for the vast majority of people.
I don't think that he wants to pick berries all the time. Or be without his family all the time (even though he prefers being on his own with the berries).
I envy the guy. I wouldn't want to pick berries all the time. But having a routine source of release and tuning out like that which happens to commune with nature and use one's hands...
I was building workbenches for my students last week. A lot of the time was spent outside breaking down pallets and staging things. It was too hot, but I saw the trees sway, the few puffy clouds move, the lizards dart through my path, the squirrels squabble. The few times the wind suddenly picked up felt like heaven. My body ached in new ways. My fingers got into a rhythm and I watched them do things.
I could easily get a job doing work like that. No! I want to be with my students, and I want to work on my hard cerebral projects. But there is a joy to being in nature and to do things with your hands, and there is a rhythm to doing time consuming work, and when we make time for it, it feels really good in a primal way.
I was using that as a metaphor. Meaning, we should be living a life where there is no manufactured societal stress we need to escape.
I don't think that at all. I think struggle and making stuff better and working hard and feeling ourselves grow is great.
And I wish I had something routine like his picking of berries, because sometimes just feeling existence and our place in it... feels really good. I'm envious of the people who find a routine that does this well for them, while I mostly find it by happenstance.
And I think you do better at the other stuff when you go pick berries.