I have been gravitating lately to YouTube videos and books about finding your purpose in life, your "ikigai," and being true to your values. Partially this is because of my upcoming book, coming out in January 2026, on living simply by bringing your core values to the forefront and eliminating the things that don't correspond to those values. I think it's also partially due, though, to the times we live in. It's never been more important to understand what matters most and to stand up and speak up for those things.
There are times I feel peaceful and contented with the path my life has taken. There are other times I feel like I've wandered away from who I truly am -- a child of the soil, the person who used to paddle in creeks and scramble through forested hillsides and ride horses bareback and laze in hammocks under the sky. The person who came home from a walk with a field mouse in a Dixie cup, the kid who begged off school to stay home and nurse an ailing rabbit. I look around at my suburban 3-bedroom home with my electric bread machine and my air fryer and wonder how I got here, when clearly I should have ended up in a cabin in the woods like Grizzly Adams. Why do I spend my days on a laptop when what I really want is to be elbows-deep in dirt, encouraging plants to grow?
How do I seek out that more authentic life, though, when my suburban house is full of 5-7 other people at any given time? I have to find the balance between accommodating their needs and nourishing my own. I do the best I can on the scale I've been given, but there are days---usually after watching too much news---when I want to rethink every decision I've ever made and every path I've ever chosen. There's a sense of time running out, and that Mary Oliver poem keeps running through my head. This really is the one and only wild and precious life I've got, and here I am, mphymphy years old and wondering how much time I realistically have left to realize my purpose. Because I truly feel driven to make my life purpose all about food security and growing things. I picture myself in a small, simple, manageable house with room for my books and my handicrafts and my loom (a proper serviceable one again, not the dinky one I have now), with wood stove and garden and well and woodlot. What more do I need?
Well, the 5-7 other people in the house, for one thing. Hence the life choices. Hence the path I've taken. But there must be a way to meld the vision with the reality. The persistence of that vision tells me it's the right one for me.
Me, growing sorghum in the backyard (you do what you gotta do):
(and one mammoth Mongolian sunflower)