It’s not the size of your house, it’s how you live your life.
All of us in the Tiny House Community are familiar with and in some way intrigued by the idea that we don’t need a big house or a fancy car to be happy. It’s not about the house. It’s not about all the things, or lack thereof, that we put in them. To me, it’s about a state of mind. It’s about a practical way of living life that focuses on experiences, not things.
I live in a tiny floating home that is just big enough to carry my family and the belongings that make me happy. What’s nearest and dearest to my heart fits inside this 300-sf boat and I can take it all with me wherever I go.
Kenny Laubbacher recently made an incredibly inspiring video about his best friend, Jedidiah Jenkins who quit his job that he loved to ride his bicycle from Oregon to Patagonia at the southern tip of South America. Kenny joined him for a month and a half to ask him why…
In the video, Jed says he has met a lot of older people that tell him “my life went by so fast,” or “I just blinked and I was 80.”
Out of fear of losing a decade of his own time to routine, he decided to do something radically different. He has been living on his bicycle for a year now making his way South from Oregon to Patagonia.
He LIVES on his BICYCLE. And he’s been living that way for over a YEAR! Now, to me, that takes the cake for smallest tiny house on wheels. Jed carries what he needs on his bike. Now of course he uses a tent to sleep in, but his bike is really his home. To me, this is a whole new realm of tiny.
Jed says, “The routine is the enemy of time. It makes it fly by… It’s not about the bike. It’s about getting out of your routine and that can look like anything.”
Watch this 4-minute video and think about how it relates to you.
Is it really about the size of your house? Or is it about how you live your life?
You can follow Jed’s wild ride on Instagram @jedidiahjenkins
Kenny can be found on Instagram @kennyjamez
By Jody Pountain for the [Tiny House Blog]
Imagine if this were a country of tiny house dwellers and nomads on bicycles. Sounds like the caveman era or native American era where folks floated from place to place based on weather conditions living off the land and providing services to trade (like trapping and finishing furs/leathers). Problem is, the world is no longer than way and in too many places there is no where to go but up (NYC, etc). There is also no longer free land to roam on. the Roma’s in Europe live this way. They get kicked back and forth between countries that don’t want them. They tend to be sloppy about their surrounds. They often pilfer food off country side gardens. Is this where we’re headed? What sounds good now will morph into someone’s nightmare? Interesting to observe the shift of humanity. Margaret Mead would be all over this.
The current world is broken. Almost anything is an improvement.
What do you mean by current world?
Could it be John Lennon was correct when he said “there’s no problems; only solutions”?
Could it be sometimes the only way humans learn is through suffering caused by ‘mistakes’, eventually leading to behavior causing less or no suffering?
I think this is so great. So many people are stuck in the routines of life and tend to lose sight of what it truly means or feels like to live, REALLY live. I think that getting back to that childhood sense of wonderment and lack of inhibition makes a huge difference in how we perceive the big picture and our lives overall. I wish him the best of luck on his journey and hopefully more people are inspired by stories like this to just get out there and do it no matter what people think or how crazy it may sound.
It’s always about how you live your life. What works for some won’t work for others but the goal should always be to live as sustainably as possible. If sometimes that includes wild and crazy adventure, so be it. For those who’d rather read about than go on an adventure, plenty of opportunities there too. If living a routine and quiet life is satisfying there’s no need to feel inadequate. The key is to find what works for you and the people whose opinions matter to you.
If everyone lived this lightly on the land, and this fully immersed in experience, the world would be a much better place –and our descendents wouldn’t be as likely to despise us.
Amen
Absolutely!