Someday doesn’t have to mean Today

I have recently noticed a thing in my life, it’s a small thing maybe even a silly thing but it is definitely a thing.

I say “thing” because it’s not exactly a problem, just a fact about me. I was in an all natural food co-op in downtown Bellingham the other day looking to pick up a few basic groceries before heading back home for the night. I wandered around the aisles idly looking at this farm grown vegetable or that all natural desert, the wide variety of organic cheeses or the strange spice who’s name I can’t spell.

It wasn’t that natural foods are a novelty for me. As a homegrown Seattle native, organic environmentally friendly products are the norm. But since coming to college they are a norm which I am choosing rather than a norm which shows up on the plate of food my mom made for dinner that night.

And, as often happens after I have finished my grocery shopping, I wandered over to the small cooking ware and housekeeping section which most co-ops have. I stared for a while at the glass lunch containers and the cast iron skillets and the earthenware plates. These, along with the all natural food options, made up the essence of what I hoped my life would look like someday, and I wanted to buy everything right then and there.

This is not an experience unique to that one time or that one co-op. In nearly every locally owned store I have been to since moving to Bellingham, and believe me that’s a lot of stores, I have taken a few minutes to stop and think what I want my life to look like in the coming years. These moments of reflection are often followed by a compulsive desire to buy everything straight away so that my life can look like that NOW.

This is a feeling which I imagine is not unfamiliar to most of you. We all have dreams, and some days we want to stop dreaming and start doing. Especially when it feels like you could almost reach out and touch your dream, just like those products on the shelf of an all natural food store.

I recently started reading a new book called “Notes from a Blue Bike”. I came across it while scrolling through Facebook at a bus stop. An old friend and long time mentor of mine recommended it in a post and mentioned it was on sale for 0.99 on Kindle. I impulse bought it right then and there and have been reading a little bit of it every night.

The author, Tsh Oxenreider, perfectly embodies the life which I would like to someday have. She and her family have lived in a variety of countries overseas, she runs a blog called The Art of Simple which allows her to work from home or wherever she wants, and she focuses on living a slow, enriching, organic life.

The more I read her work the harder it is to keep myself from rushing to the first all natural market I can find and buying all their products. After all, it’s a good dream – right? It’s better for me, it’s better for the environment, the one thing it isn’t good for is my budget. Because the sad fact is that the glass lunch containers and cast iron pots and the earthenware plates are just beyond the stretching point of my college spending.

So the question becomes: What part of that lifestyle do I have the ability to live in right now?

It’s not about a complete lifestyle makeover, it’s not about fulfilling your dreams over night, it’s about recognizing that there is an ideal which you hold in your mind but can not obtain – for the moment at least. I tell myself that someday doesn’t have to mean today – that I can have a dream for the future without having a compelling need to make it into reality right now. The trick is to find the parts of the dream which are obtainable. Small things, silly things, anything to remind you that someday will come.

I recognized that as I stood in front of the shelves wishing I could buy it all. I couldn’t buy it all, not right then. But what I could do was purchase my coffee cream in a glass jar from a local farm, put it in my backpack and walk three blocks to catch the bus back to campus. Those are small things, silly things perhaps, but they remind me that I have a dream and that I haven’t given up.