Bloom where you are planted

I received the following comment during the week from Monique who wrote:

... we want to sell our place and search for a new home we can make our home. We both know this is not our place to be. So Rhonda, would you recommend us to make our place a home right now or save our love for the next place?
We are afraid that if we are going to love this house, we never, ever could sell it. Do you know what I mean?The only thing what's in our heart is the great desire to sell this place. That's our dream, that's our greatest wish. Won't we stop this feeling if we are going to love this place?
By the way: our place right now is an building of ten floors in the middle of a city and many factories. Our dream is an old tiny, little farm or cottage in the middle of nowhere.

We have a tomato bush growing in the grass, next to the hard surface of our back verandah.  It came up out of no where, was not planned nor planted by either of us, it just arrived.  The bush is held up with sticks and a couple of pieces of metal from an old card rack.  It's huge and healthy and much bigger than our planned and carefully planted tomatoes; it's taller than I am.  Last night, along with whiting cooked with lemon and olive oil, home grown lettuce, raw, shredded beetroot and carrot and potato salad, we had some of those tomatoes.  They were delicious.

Bloom where you are planted.

I have written about this in a different way here but I wanted to address a certain issue with you, Monique. When you're older and look back on your life, although it will feel like one long, unbroken thread, you'll see it's fragmented with times when you were perfectly happy doing what you were doing and other times when you did something that might not have seemed right at the time but lead you on to something better.  ALL of it is your life.  ALL of it should be made the most of.

Do you know there are only 9,000 hours in a year and that if you live to 80, you'll only have 720,000 hours to live.  Life is short.

Everyone of those hours is precious so don't waste too many of them wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else.  Make the most of every hour.  You don't have to live in the country to live simply.  Right here, right now you can be preparing for your country life while you make your city life and your city home productive, comfortable and beautiful. So when you ask "would you recommend us to make our place a home right now or save our love for the next place?"  I recommend both to you.  It is possible to love where you live right now, to make it a safe and comfortable haven for you both, and still love where you will move to in the future.  I believe that if you decide to make the house you are living in now a warm and nourishing home, if you use that space to teach yourself all the life skills you need, both now and later, if you dive into your simple life right now, you will be living to your true potential and it will prepare you for the move to the country when you are ready for it.

No one knows how their life will unfold.  We can only deal with the times we live in and hope that our plans for the future work out the way we hope.  But I will tell you this, if you don't take your life by the throat this very day and live like it really matters, you will have wasted a lot of your hours.  What you're living now is not a wedge of life that doesn't matter.  It all matters. Try to love your whole life, not just the parts of it you yearn for.  You heart is capable of non-stop love, if you love you home now, you will still have the capacity to love your future home.  So talk to your husband, work out what you both want, now and in the future, and make your current circumstances part of your simple life.  And do it today.  You might not have a huge back garden where you are now, but you can still find a space to produce food and learn the ins and outs of it.  You can cut down on chemicals in your life, stop using plastics, learn to sew and knit, learn how to cook from scratch, produce your own bread, jams, sauces, learn how to make sauerkraut and herrings in brine.  It is up to you to make the life you want to live. There is so much to be done.  Your time starts NOW.