The Choices We Make

 

When I chose to get a dog from the pound about five years ago, little did I know of the ritual that would soon become my life. Every morning up at 5:30 and after the coffee cup hits the coffee table for the final time, a nudge (toy in mouth) and off we go for our morning walk. In the afternoon after work another walk, work in the woodshop or in the garden, and some playing in the yard until it is time to eat. Then, off to the favorite bed she goes watching the house from her favorite perch.

The choice to get a dog from the pound has obvious implications. My life has changed, but so has hers. I made a choice, and that choice has brought me as well as my dog a great deal of happiness. These are the choices we make, and we continually make. Other choices that we make do not always have obvious implications.

When I choose to go to the grocery store (the walk of shame as I call it), or to buy something at the local hardware store the choices we make there also have implications. However, those implications are not always as clear as bringing a dog into your life. There are animals that pay a high price for the choices we make. We make choices for many reasons, but those reasons should always be clear to us as well as the consequences of the choices we make.

An easy choice is not always the right choice, and those choices that we deem as difficult should not always be difficult. We can choose to do the right thing, but to simply do the right thing takes time, it is a habit that we must acquire. I believe that most of us know what the right choice is but are often tempted by the easy and swayed by the convenient. Our choices become others and not our own.

Perhaps it’s time to take our choices back, but this too is a choice; at least for now.

Permanent Culture

We want something permanent and permaculture seems to offer the certainty that we search for. The answer, like so many answers that we find, is difficult to accept and at first glance we often sway away from it. However it has grown patient, being accustomed to our ignorance of it. It waits patiently, knowing we do not have a choice. We ignore it and it sits back down silently awaiting our return; we will return. We must return.

Permaculture does not begin with digging a hole, planting ground cover, planting bushes, fruit trees, and finally large, slow-growing giants. Rather, permaculture starts with an understanding that we can be a part of something greater than ourselves. It is almost religious, but without the reliance upon religious doctrine or dogma. Permaculture relies upon time and our acceptance that it is beyond us and at the same time makes up the core of what we, as agrarians, really are: stewards, renters of the land that we love.

We strive in so many ways to be remembered, to leave a legacy but these ways are bound to fail. Children forget and businesses crumble; blood is thin and love is short lived; people are irresponsible and the greatest of natural places fall to ruin. Permanence comes at a cost and permaculture does not let us forget this fact easily. Plant a tree that you know you will never see come to full fruition; be a part of an ecosystem that is not anthropocentric. Be a part of an infinite system that you somehow love and that cannot love you back. Pay the price to protect the one thing that can protect you.

The permaculture that we work toward now will become the permanent culture that lives after us. Permaculture is progress, but it is progress that stretches beyond the borders of desire, of economy, and even of human imagination. Stretch the limits of abilities and see what happens. Make permaculture permanent in our culture.