One of the main regrets of people at the end of their days is «not having had the courage to do what they wanted to do and not what others expected them to do.» This is what Bronnie Ware, an expert in palliative care, confesses in her book The top five regrets of the dying.
Other common regrets are: not have been happier nor more faithful to himself, not having enjoyed friends and loved ones more, and not having dedicated himself less to work and more to living. We feel something like that, but without having reached an advanced age or seeing ourselves in a situation of no return.
We lived in the province of Barcelonawhere one of us had moved for love 15 years earlier from Vizcaya. We had stable jobs, a mortgage and we postponed freedom until retirementwhich by the way derives from «joy.»
Our life was moderately satisfactorybut we realized that we aspired to something more. That Life could not be «just» being born, signing, consuming and dying.
The catharsis In our case it did not come from outside, from an illness, an accident, a grief or stress. It was the first year of our son’s life that made us rethink what we were doing, why and where we wanted to go. But it wasn’t sudden…
Searching for coherence led us to live in the countryside
We had been attending Biocultura, the largest ecological living fair in Spain, for years and learning about other forms of lifereading, taking retreats and courses on personal development, natural nutrition and Perennial Wisdom.
«Our internal life did not correspond to our external one and, thanks to the conscious upbringing of a baby, we had the certainty of wanting something different and the strength to carry it out»
For don’t rushwe both decided to independently answer two existential questions: what would we do if we won the lottery? And what would we do if we had one year to live? And the answers convinced us.
We didn’t need to die or be rich: it was just a matter of desert and start walking. It was the year 2006, before the crisis and the labor disaster, and decisions were made with another margin of maneuver.
Still, many they took us for aliens when we announced the decision to leave two permanent jobs and go to a small town in the mountains of La Rioja Baja, where we met on vacation and the roots of our ancestors sink.
In the 50s, 60s and 70s there was an enormous demographic transfer from towns to cities. Our parents were expelled from their homes in their childhood to the industrial centers of the Basque Country and Catalonia due to social circumstances and scarcity.
Some 40 years later, we did the reverse pathbut freely, with maturity, studies, resources and the will to undertake a life with purpose.
Not everything is so easy, but it’s worth it
It was not all «said and done», but it took us three years to sell the apartment. The real estate market crashed and our initial budget fell apart, but we were readjusting plans on the fly.
We debuted with a blog of extensive and incisive articles, «El dedo en la llaga», in 2007, which lasted several years. In 2008 we opened El Blog Alternativo. There were numerous thematic blogs, but none that reflected the holistic and varied world that we liked, and we decided to create it ourselves: slow living, ecology, simplicity, respectful parenting, alternative pedagogies, healthy cooking, natural health, personal growth, spirituality and denunciation of the system.
The idea was a blog-cocktail from the magazines that inspired us: bodymind – present in our lives since we were young–, The Ecologist, Comprehensive and the extinct Athanor and Natural Breeding. Then we opened La Cocina Alternativa and from here the cooking classes and other collaborations were born. Today we are behind Conscious Home.
Living in a town in the 21st century
Until relatively recently, agriculture, livestock, crafts or a hippy and contemplative life seemed the only options offered by the rural world. However, today, the situation has changed rapidly and you can reside IN the countryside without living FROM the countryside. Neither the cities are a Golden of prosperity and employment for all, nor the towns the refuge of retirees.
Thanks to new technologiestowns increasingly attract new residents, whether they are exiled from the urban market in search of second chances, digital entrepreneurs with freedom of movement or romantics of slow life and nature.
There is no single neorural profilenor of experiences: repopulating abandoned towns, living in ecovillages, squatting, organizing around new free schools, residing in dormitory towns near large cities or simply wanting a greener life.
The towns are open to new neighbors, but they don’t give anything away, nor do they have to be a bed of roses. Adaptation and «success» will depend on expectationsbudget, motivation and circumstances of each one.
Living in the countryside is not a matter of luck, but of decisions that also have a price. In our case, everyday life in a small town is very satisfying and full of events, boredom is impossible when you live in a community and with children; pI was the road towards economic self-sufficiency has been much longer, hostile and difficult than we had imagined.
Many people tell us that «how lucky» it is to live in the countryside surrounded by nature, and we always respond that It’s not about luck but about decisions. Because life is built based on decisions, knowing that you have to pay a price for many of them…
This article was originally written for Bodymente magazine when María del Mar Jiménez and Ángel González were about ten years into their new life. We now rescue his testimony at a time when the price of housing and urban stress continue to force many people to consider the challenge of looking for a home in a town and changing their lives.
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