everything changes

not only the seasons but the things that are in my head. With a great whirring of cogs and jingling of bells, I am...not quite changing my mind about something - the paradigm change happened a while ago - but things that were on the edges of my thoughts are kerplunking into place and starting to make sense. When all the whirring is over, the opinion I come out with might seem like a total change of perspective to outsiders, but those who know me well will know it was all there all along.
The book that I said I was reading the other day talks, in an anthropologically kind of way, about the differences between farmers and hunter-gatherers. I've always put myself on the side of farmers, for obvious reasons but, reading this book makes me realise that, if what he is saying is true, I'm not and never have been. And don't want to be either.
The connection to place and land, the wanting to meet needs but not create unnecessary surplus....it's not often that one meets up with that but, it would seem that it's the norm in hunter-gatherer communities. There are other similarities to my thoughts too - about the way that children take their place in society, about the respect for the nature one depends on, about knowing ones place in the whole system - a system that puts people in the whole eco-system and doesn't see them as being separate.
People who can't move away from their mountain, people who feel peace when they see the same view that they've seen every day since childhood, people who know what the earth of home smells like....people who don't want to move on, who are quite happy with what they have.

It will all fall into place in my head some day soon but, until then, I feel happy to know that the majority of human history has been spent in a way that I feel at home in and that many people living today are part of that too.