Progress

This is the beginnings last night's dinner, prepared in the guest bathroom. There are cooked potatoes in the colander at the back, radishes, just picked, and pickled cucumbers. I'll write about this meal in a future post.

We are making progress. It might not look like it, but there has been movement in the right direction. Yesterday the dehumidifier was removed after draining something like 200 litres of water! Absolutely incredible. Today the floor goes down and tomorrow the kitchen is put back. But enough of my kitchen, if you're not bored with it by now, I am, and I want to talk about progress.

I think many of us, myself included, have been conditioned to believe that we should always have our desires met instantly. We are told not to save for what we want to buy but to have what we want instantly by using a credit card. Have it now! This happens in the home too. We have instant porridge, two minute noodles, instant soup, tea bags, precooked rice, we even have instant messaging. Why can't we wait for these things? I believe there are few nicer ways to start the day, and to think about what I'll be doing during the day, than to stand at the stove stirring porridge - real oats. I love brewing tea in a pot with tea leaves too. Tea needs time to develop flavour. Tea bags just don't cut it. Yes, I know tea bags take a fraction of the time a pot of tea takes. You will save about 2 minutes using a tea bag. But what do you do with those two minutes? Do you get what a pot of tea will give you - a sense of slowing down and the anticipation of good tea.

Sometimes you have to wait for progress to happen too. It's not instant, precooked, predigested or fast. Like your tea in a pot or good porridge, progress needs work invested in it, and occasionally it needs to be stirred before you realise something is happening. You might be focused on your simple life and doing some of the things we talk about here, but feel you're not getting anywhere. Progress is a strange phenomenon. It might happen quickly right before your eyes, yet sometimes you ache for it and you feel abandoned. If that is how you feel, don't give up, don't ever give up, progress is brewing in the background.

If you're feeling frustrated by a lack of progress towards the life you want to live, start stirring your porridge, so to speak, by learning more simple things you will need in your life. That might include reading more about budgeting, redoing your budget, talking to a friend or neighbour about keeping chickens or growing vegetables, decluttering a small area of your home or taking time for yourself each day to sit, relax and think. This small step will often stimulate progress to show itself in some way.

Sometimes you just need to wait because behind the scenes progress is bubbling away happily without you knowing it. When the time is right, you'll wake up to a brighter view of your life and you'll see you're closer to your ideal than you realised. Simplicity is not a tea bag, it's a pot of tea and it needs time to develop it's full flavour. And remember that you won't always see your progress, it sometimes creeps along too silent and transparent to be noticed.