I live a simple life.

I have spent years disincorporating the trappings that most people suffer from. I have no bills. No material needs. No responsibilities except to my dog, my self, and to those that I love. Because of this I have been able to live without judgment or expectation or hurry. To focus only on those things that matter most to me; love and gratitude. And I am free to love. Completely.

While this may sound ideal, even Utopian, and so long as I was single I must admit that it was, these traits, the very same traits that attracted the woman I love, can be detrimental in a relationship.

Example: I have no credit. Until very recently I literally had a non-existent credit score. Not a bad score. None at all. I paid cash or bartered for everything I owned. Before making my move South I owned all the same things anyone else might own; a boat, camper, motorcycle, car. All without credit. More than others, I owned my home. Yes, it was a cheap home, but it was mine, debt-free. I created sacred space there. Free from all negative influence. It was comfortable. Peaceful. It was my retreat.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It is. Very. So long as I was single. Now, not so much.

Living like that has it’s benefits but it is not an easy way to live. It left very little room for savings and none at all for mistakes or accidents. It is a way of life that is very hand-to-mouth.

In the last few months I have rejoined the world, as far as is necessary to be in a committed relationship, and I now have the credit score of a teenager. Not bad for a couple months effort but not so easy to buy property like that. Less easy to reassure my Beloved of my financial responsibility when I can’t even afford to take her out for dinner.

How strange to find myself diving back into the material world after spending so much time dissociating from it. Especially so late in life.

Things will change. They must change if I am to have a successful relationship. So I am back on the grid again. Doing so has taken much time and effort and caused more than a little stress and is the main reason I haven’t written much lately. This is not a bad thing. Not at all.

I will maintain balance in this change. I will never become attached to material things but I know that I must admit them into my life if I am to coexist with my Beloved. I will push myself to those limits I know exceed others because I know that in doing so I will provide a life that my Beloved deserves. Desire, other than the desire to make my Beloveds life better, plays no part in this decision. That is how balance is maintained. What I do, I do for Love. Same as ever.

So now I am like a horse that spent it’s life at the gate, ready to run but without a race to run in. There, at the gate, I lived quite comfortably. I had nothing to prove. Nowhere to go. One might grow fat and lazy living like that but I never lost sight of that gate. I remained prepared, I learned the course and the wind and the best days to run behind the sun or chasing the moon because I always knew that one day the gates would open and I would have to run like the wind. I have never doubted for a second that I would place.

Such faith and hope, the same I so often try to convey here, is also utopian. It is beautiful in word. Passionate in poem. But in real life it requires that my Lover also have faith and hope, and in the world she lives in, the world you live in, faith and hope are things experienced only briefly in flashes or desperation. They are ephemeral. Intangible.

For me, they are a way of life.

So I will run.

I hope it’s fast enough.

Image: “What’s Left of Utopia” by Julien Mauve

Published by J M Greff

J M Greff is the rambling author, trucker philosopher, peace loving hippie, spiritual warrior, backpacking pantheist, wandering minstrel, and poet fool who created A Caravan of One for you. View all posts by J M Greff