Midlife crisis

I went to the woods with my father. To pick lignonberries. My father is, for obvious reasons, bit older than I am. But he is in better physical condition than I am. He has done lots of physical chores in the summercottage all summer. Whereas I have been sittin on my a..butt all summer working. And then resting from the strain caused by work.

We climbed a steep hill. I started to sweat. Then we arrived to the first bushes. And oh horror. Someone had allready been there. It is completely legal for anyone to go and pick them. But somehow I felt as if I had been robbed. We found some spots with berries. It was slow and I was getting more hot and sweatty. We moved slowly forward and picked what we could find.

My mind was circling around work, worries and thoughts of future and old age. Well, all those thoughts you can think of when you lie on your bed at night and cannot sleep. I was starting to think how the bucket would never be full.

More time and more sweat. The flies found me. They were circling around me as if they were waiting for me to die and then have a feast. More flies gathered. They started to land on my lips, ears, eyes and where ever they wanted. More flies and now also the nasty ones that feed on the blood of moose.

Mother told us not to go. Why did we not listen to her? What if father has a heart attack in the Woods? What if I get lost and I cannot find him anymore? Where is my bucket? Why did I want to come here? What a terrible thing to do: pick berries with your face full of flies. I will never make this mistake again!

And then. A red field. Full of berries just waiting for someone to come and pick them. The stems were quite short, so I dropped on my knees and then started moving with a four-limb-drive, vacuuming the berries as I went forward. I started to find the rythm with my movements. There was a little rattle as the berries dropped into my picker. My bucket started to fill with a good speed. So I went forward and listened to the sound of berries. Just went on like a robot. There were no more flies and my worries started to vaporate into the air. I started to hear the birds sing and the wind in the trees.

For one hour I just went and picked the berries. It was almost a dissappointing moment when the bucket was full and we had to return. The flow-kind-of-moment was over. I was swetting again and the flies were back. But I did not mind. Well, I did mind my step when descending from the hill. And my mind was clear. I was without worries.

Thinking back what happened I came to think if there really is a thing called midlife-crisis? I can of-course speak only for myself. But little by little all work and chores are done by the machines. There is no simple and monotonous work for humans left. But what if our brain needs a break from being more and more efficient all the time? We compete with the machines and have to be better than a machine or we will be replaced by one. There are lots of catastrophes going on all the time. Most of them caused by human creed. But I will not go into that now.

My thought of the day is: If you have a crisis, any kind of a crisis, go to the woods to pick something with a person who has no crisis. She/he is probably in a better shape than you are. Just because the rest hers/his brain gets and the exercise causing it. Get up where ever your are sitting and feeling sorry for yourself. Go to the nature and forged your sorrows for a while. That will make life better, at least for a brief moment. And maybe teach that those moments have to be picked little by little, just like berries.

So next time I complain, just say that go read that blog of yours.