The Road to Hectors Farm

We both feel fortunate that we have come to this stage of our lives and feel we can make a change in the way we live, have the freedom to do the things we want to do, feel strong enough to choose to live the way we want to live. For us, it has been a choice.

Reading a newspaper in a cafe in Edinburgh over the weekend, an article stood out in one of the magazines, unfortunately I didn’t spot which of the Scottish papers it was. It described how for so many people caught up in the whole financial changes that have gone on over the past few years, their lives have been forcefully changed through losing their jobs or their own businesses running into difficult times etc. The focus of the article was on how after their initial fear of losing their livelihood, their main source of income, they felt liberated in a way which allowed them to choose the life for themselves and not feel compelled to follow the life others had prescribed for them. One lady had gone from earning 60K a month, to having to scrape about for pennies to catch a bus into town to go shopping. Someone else had chosen to go off to some far away land to do volunteer work. Basically, all of them had seen that they don’t have to attach themselves to a big company, they don’t have to chase after huge wealth and material possessions. They realised there was more to life than working to earn money, that they could still lead an enjoyable life without the big job to support it.

I’m sure they have all gone through some terribly difficult times to get to this point. I don’t for a second think it was easy for any of them; indeed, it must have been an enormously traumatic time. But it was warming to see that people are seeing the opportunity for change like that, recognising that life is here for living, not just for working. We are fortunate to not have been impacted in a big way by the way things have gone over the past few years financially. Our choice is one made from within ourselves and not as a consequence of something like redundancy. What is encouraging in the article though is that people are seeing that it doesn’t have to be the way others tell them it has to be. They can make choices for themselves and they can enjoy life in its simplest forms. In their photo’s they all had huge smiles on their faces and you got the impression that they weren’t painted on because they were in front of a camera.