Challenging the Gypsy Soul with Jersey Cows
Commitment doesn’t necessarily come easily to me — I have been a gypsy, a roamer, a wanderer, a mover, an unpredictable soul. I have moved close to 60 times in my life, living in homes for weeks and months at a time, housesitting, living in spare bedrooms, staying in yurts, living in homes with seven roommates, sharing bedrooms, living on farms, living on beaches and airplanes, living out of U-Haul trucks, living out of storage spaces, living out of hotels for brief periods…
It hasn’t been easy for me to stay put. It also has been hard for me to move so much. I have lived more in the liminal and in-between space of not having a foot fully committed to either world — not fully a gypsy and not fully rooted. In that way, I have lived a life where I did not have to choose between either world but somehow held awkwardly to both ends of the string.
I have made a lot of commitments in the last year and a half of my life. I have gotten married, chosen a place to live and purchased a home and land to live on, invested in 30 chickens and 4 piglets — all of which require a full heart and soul of commitment, dedication, consistency and routine. I have gone to graduate school and completed a masters degree which required incredible resiliency and continuity. I have chosen to dedicate myself to the art of Saturn, to the art of staying with something in hopes that I may feel the medicinal qualities of commitment.
Something that I often tell the couples that I work with when they say, “I just don’t get to do what I want to do. I feel so much pressure to show up and be present for my partner — it can be stifling and suffocating.” And I say, “Well, yea. That is what happens when you choose to have a family and a home and a life with other people. You end up getting called to show up, be present and stay consistent.” Not that, of course, we cannot have moments and periods of deep freedom and wild abandon but even those, have to be communicated to our spouses and families so that we consider the impact on the whole as we take time apart. Relationship calls us to show up and calls us back to commitment because people depend on us and need us when we are in relationship with them.
And no, I don’t mean that people need us in a co-dependent kind of way. I mean that in a real, human, interconnected kind of way. Hopefully, we develop a need for one another, a hunger, an ache, a profound uprising when there is an absence of the other. And in that way, our very human sense of selfishness gets challenged, it gets worked.
Choosing to have a farm and to work that farm every day with my wife, requires that I am able to show up and I am not always able to show up. Some days I want to hide in my studio and write, lay on the floor and pick tarot cards and read astrology books endlessly. And some days, I am able to do that — at least for moments throughout the day. But there is part of me, if I am being totally honest, that has felt entitled to these moments. That I should get to claim and have and hold these moments no matter what, regardless of what Heathar needs or is doing. But I have been realizing that that belief system requires a kind of selfishness that a farm and a marriage cannot afford. I have to remove my foot from the ground and stop myself mid-tantrum, easing myself into and remembering the requirements of my life.
When we are deeply invested in our lives, they will require things from us. They will require time and dedication and structure and planning and presence. I believe it will sometimes feel like that is all we are giving — time and dedication and energy to the things we are committed to. This is what creates a family and a home and a farm and a book and a friendship and on and on. What I notice over and over again in our modern world is that we try and get out of obligation. That somehow we have demonized Saturn and it’s requirements — we have made wrong the heaviness of commitment and the weight of consistency. We have idolized the young and the free, the nomadic and the ones who carry their laptops effortlessly all over the world. We worship adventure and travel, money and freedom. And to be sure, I love all of these things. I love travel and freedom and adventure and surprise. But perhaps what I want to stop doing is defending myself against the requirements of choices and commitments. I want to stop pushing against commitment and resisting it out of the fear that if I fully surrender to it, I will lose myself in the belly of the beast and in the demands of all my choices.
Yes, I can protect my time and space for creative projects (like writing this blog for example), I can prioritize dreams and wants and visions for my life but not separate from or excluding the interconnected web of my life, my family, my home and my farm.
I often feel like I have to defend the cave where my creative dragon lives, that I cannot let any schedule or time or obligation come close to that sleeping dragon lest it wake up and we all get drenched with fire. When I feel this protective, I live with one foot in the world of my commitments. What if it wasn’t freedom or family but what if this life is a lot about learning how to have both? What if one of our essential needs as humans is learning to hold this inevitable paradox that all of us face?
If I give myself fully to the farm and sit with my fear around what might happen to my creative and professional life if I do that, what then? How would the farm feed the other elements of my life? How would the commitment become the alchemical container where more actually gets to happen and not less? How would commitment add to my life instead of detract from my “time”?
Heathar spent part of this afternoon googling Jersey cows that we could purchase for milking and she found some good options in southern Colorado. A milking cow needs to be milked every morning and every night if you are to properly take care of your cow and receive all the benefits of what a cow can offer: cream, butter, milk, whey for the pigs and of course, ice cream. A cow is commitment, a cow is dedication. A cow requires both legs and one full heart to step into the farm, it is a tether and an anchor to the land you live on and the life that happens there.
I come from a long line of nomads and ancestors who were not tethered to place, home or family. Sometimes I feel like I am laying this question at the feet of my ghosts and asking, “What about this? What if we tried this? What if we tried home and place and chickens and pigs and one Jersey milking cow? What would happen then? Would I shake this line too much? Would it cause all of you ghosts to scratch your heads and furrow your eyebrows?” What would be required of me to bow at the feet of the great mystery of commitment, become the renegade in the line of gypsy souls and begin to understand what is necessary to show up for a life lived in relationship with others?
