Like what will happen to the family jewels when I am to carry them...
Here they are, actually, fruits in our garden. This one I shot a week and a half ago in my grandpa's and grandma's village. They don't actually live there, they travel for about 20 kilometers to tend to the orchard. And my father has another one. Two, even, if I count the backyard of our house in my home town.
This is real food. As opposed to supermarket food which is also kind of real, and yet, not the same at all.
I am of the generation that quit tending to the land. I even have experience with it. I went through the process of sawing, tilling, reaping/gathering/picking..., postprocessing and selling, as well. As a child. While I lived with my family. I didn't think it was any wealth then but I do now. The more I see how expensive food becomes, how low quality (oh, but premier appearance), how undervalued and overvalued at the same time. And we had it...That was our country's major wealth.
There's a funny video to a funny song in Bulgarian which plays the following message at the end:
"According to statistics, hundreds of thousands of young people leave agriculture yearly to flow into the Bulgarian show business, Don't be one of them!"
While the numbers are exaggerated (because we don't have that many young people yearly if for no other reason), it rings true enough.
I have become one of them.
So, I have the background, I do realize where things are going...what will I do? Will I go back to live by the land I have? Rich land, enough to feed a family and to sell, mind you... Oh, by the way, it's not that easy. Small business is being killed off consistently and on purpose. We prefer to think of the state as incompetent, but that's not the facts. It's greedy and ruthless. (How did I end up writing these things when I have so much work to do? Aren't I already in the trap of working too much to think about the big picture?)
Anyway, I have the option to go back to a more natural way of living.
The thing is...
For the time being, I can't choose to.
I just want to live another life. The thing that according to Zen teachings destroys happiness, by the way. Wanting ever more than you have. And I realize that, too.
But what will I really do when it comes to me...
...to tend to those orchards and acres of fertile land?
The only answer I am able to find here, for now, is...delegate. But I also need to find a suitable person, right? I don't know how to do that. Yet.
Yours,
Manol
