🏠Putting the big house on the market
Letting go of a previous dream to pursue a new dream puts us in a spot of reconciling with our own inconsistency. In both Alchemy by Rory Sutherland and Influence by Robert B. Cialdini I learned how prized consistency of behavior is in our society. When we change we throw people off. They don't know what to expect from us, and sometimes this can erode trust.
We see this play out most visibly in politics. Politicians aren't allowed to change their mind. We expect them to know their truth from the beginning no matter what new information might come to light.
But being consistent with expectations or with our own past behavior may not be in alignment with what is best in our future. New information comes to light all the time. The pandemic added new information to our understanding of risk and helped us be thoughtful about our values. We learned when life suddenly changed that some of the things that we took for granted might actually be fragile. Today we understand that our income and even the staples we buy weekly may not be guaranteed.
In 2018 I had this hobby farm dream. So we moved away from the increasingly busy town to get some extra space and start our mornings with feeding animals and collecting eggs. We thought we might be able to make a little extra income with calves, but mostly we wanted a balance to the blast of wealth and consumption in our work lives.
This month we are putting the farm house on the market in order to take the final step toward living in our tiny home and even quieter community full time. This step comes after much thought and conversation. We have been cataloging the lessons and appreciation of the recent chapter while processing new information and values in advance of the next season of our lives.
We now value simplicity and less dependence on the systems that faltered in 2020. We gained a more acute sense of our own mortality and want to be closer to the natural earth and have more time to do the things that light us up. And all of that requires an elimination of our mortgage and the other costs of a big house in order to reduce our mental and financial load.
To our friends and family it may appear inconsistent for us to so dramatically change direction. But in reality it is just another stop along the route of moving closer and closer to our deepest truths. We just couldn't let ourselves that much off the conventional hook in 2018. We didn't know then what we know now. We, unconventional thinkers, can progressively get bolder each time we get new information, take a next brave step and find more of ourselves there.
