Do Good

The weather turned this weekend. It had been a summer for the record books. It started early and hot and ran strong until now. But, even with only a few days of the low-ceiling grey the familiar crispness of fall feels like its been here for weeks, not days. The recent rains have brought the smell of woodsmoke and sweet rotting blackberries. The chickens are darting around half naked and our 7 eggs a day is down to 2 or 3. The logging down the hill has been in full swing for the past month. Shorts and sandals have made way for jeans and boots and it's almost time for us to begin burning again. This summer went by fast. The good ones always do. But, as fall is engulfing us I'm desperately trying to drop anchor and slow down. This transition from heat to rain has always been my favorite time of the year and I'm not ready to wake up to November quite yet. Living the fast life has become the norm. It's not a bad thing. But, it's not my thing. I live where I live because I want to live even slower. I want less places to be. I want to be bored. Ironically, in trying to achieve this I could quite easily make myself a 100 item to-do list of all the ways I can slow down ... all the things I can and must do to achieve those moments of unobstructed inner peace. But, today, all I want to think about is one thing. Rather than trying to "do" more stuff and check things off my list, I'd rather just do good. I don't know that any (many?) of us need reminders of what we "need" to do. But, sometimes it's easy to let quantity overshadow quality. I definitely am guilty of working as opposed to being. I have fallen for that trickster of a notion that accomplishing tasks somehow is the path to the good life. And, absolutely, hard work is nothing to thumb your nose at. It matters. But, what also matters, and matters more, is working with intention of bettering - bettering yourself and those around you. I have by no means mastered this, quite the opposite. But, just this morning I found myself sitting in the drivers seat of a truck that clicks but won't start, at the end of a summer where I had lots of fun but collected no firewood and the idea of having no truck and no firewood started was clouding my mood. It's these times where frustration is the easy path (the low path) that I have to remind myself that things work out. And what matters in the interim is how we do things and for what purpose. Even something as simple (not easy!) as fixing a truck or collecting firewood can be done with a simple intention: do good.