Did you know that in our town you can buy the good life if you just fork out $155,000 for land, and a lot more for a home built on it?
If you believe the billboard on the wall of our local shopping centre, then the good life is as simple as a massive mortgage and a nuclear family, and is always coming soon. It makes me laugh. This to me subtlety implies that you will not achieve this ‘nirvana state’ without buying their product.
It sounds a bit delusional of them to me, because I believe that I live the good life, and it is not coming soon nor as expensive as they claim. It is here and it is now. You don’t need to buy much at all to have a good life.
The good life, in my mind, has two meanings, depending on your point of view. It could be one that our peer pressure consumer society expects you to conform with, which is one where you buy everything you need from others. I don’t think that having lots of debt does not give one a good life. I know that it made me miserable in the past.
Or it could be the meaning that I now subscribe to, which is one of the producer/consumer, whereby we try to grow a fair bit of our own food, cook it, and store it for later on in the year. Our good life includes making things myself, which gives me immense satisfaction and a sense of pride in a job well done.
So don’t believe every billboard you see, because you can have the good life where you are living right now! You don’t need a big block of land to make a go of a sustainable lifestyle. I have found that by using space wisely, you can fit in a lot of great things without making it look like a disaster zone.
How have you tried to live the good life where you live now?