Recovering
I've been acutely ill for sometime, and today I finally felt like I am going to recover.
Throughout the illness, I've been thinking about what genuinely matters in life and what I need to have a good life. I've been practising minimalism and extreme minimalism for 15 or so years now. My reasons are ecological, spiritual, and aesthetic. At different points in my life, I thought I reached a perfect level of consumption, just to learn that there is no perfection. Everything changes, and I always learn something new. It's been a humbling journey. Naturally, I've been thinking about health. I desperately wanted it back. I could see clearly the things I did not need. For example, I had many cotton mesh bags. I invited them into my life a while ago to be able to package loose vegetables and fruits. Over time, I realised that those bags looked beautiful but were unnecessary. I could simply put fruits and vegetables in one cotton bag. I didn't need to separate them. I had a stainless steel cup, but I much prefer to use a glass jar that came with some pasta sauce. Perhaps I was holding on to some of those things because they technically belonged to my household rather than me personally, and they were zero-waste. When I could finally walk, I took all those things to a byttestation.
As my illness progressed, I lost my sense of smell. The world felt flat and sterile. Losing the sense of smell took away much simple pleasure from my everyday life. I don't use perfumes or other scented products, but I love the smells of nature after the rain, apples, oranges, basil. I could not smell anything. I was thinking that there are various objects in my "sufficiency list", yet so many things I take for granted. My sense of smell, normal body temperature, being mobile.
I've been drinking coffee since my teenage years. On multiple occasions I tried to stop. In the recent years, I wanted to stop drinking coffee for ecological reasons. I wanted to consume more local, herbal teas and simple tap water that is safe to drink here in the Nordics. But I could never quit drinking coffee completely. When I was ill, I made a cup of coffee but I felt so bad afterwards, that I decided to live for some days without coffee. I've not had coffee for many days now.
My partner and I were invited to a fellow human's birthday party. We went to a small store here in Copenhagen that sells Danish cider to get some local cider for the person. Both my partner and I believe that food is a wonderful and sustainable gift.
To recover, I've been resting a lot, taking things slowly, setting boundaries with work commitments. I've been open with my fellow humans about the help I need. I've been dreaming and making plans so I can look forward to something. I've been eating very simple, whole food.
