Rethinking Seasonal Living: Celebrating what we don’t have.
Estimated 4 minute 30 second read
As a family we’ve been slowly detaching ourselves from the fast pace and mantras of consumerism for over a decade. It’s a layered and complex process with new rounds of learning and unlearning at every corner – Undoing a lifetime of deeply ingrained norms and thought and being marketed to. One thing I’ve come to see a new meaning and depth to more recently is the idea of seasonal living – except not at all the seasonal living we’ve been sold.
While I love the earthy side of seasonal living; being in touch with nature, eating from the garden and foraging, it’s also often used to sell a certain way of life. Strawberries in June, veg boxes, a kind of cabbage you’ve never heard of, and a slogan of luxury life and eating. In other words, seasonal living has been made all about what’s abundant at every moment.
The thing is we’ve only been told part of the story. When we think of seasonal living we think of what’s IN season. What’s available to us… now? Seasonal living has become akin to talking about what’s abundant. Which really is just rebranded consumerism. Focusing on what we can have lots of, now.
We’ve only seen half of seasonal living
But that’s only half the picture. Seasonal living is also about embracing what’s absent. If we think in terms of the garden, you don’t get a summer of abundant vegetables without a cold, dead looking, winter. Except again, contrary to what consumerism would say… the wintery times of lack aren’t about waiting for the abundance to return. And this is where it gets good for me! That’s that consumerism focused mindset creeping back in again. Seeing winter as waiting for the abundance of summer is still centring “having” as the best part of life. That’s what consumerism wants.
When we homeschooled for a hot second (more on that here!) we studied the poles. My kids and I quickly came to love a YouTuber Cecilia who lives in the Arctic and watching her experience of Polar Night: 4 whole months of complete darkness. My son, who had been regularly complaining about England’s dark winter days asserted “Mum I want to live though a Polar Night.” The very lack of light he’d been complaining about he now wanted more of? Why?
Because suddenly he didn’t see the absence of light as lack. The darkest, coldest winter wasn’t the lack of summer, and football, and playground and warmth anymore. It wasn’t the waiting season. It was something to be celebrated in and of itself. Not as something to get through. Not as a countdown. The season of lack was being framed instead as a different kind of abundance. And seeing that mindset shift honestly changed my whole life. This was the essence of seasonal living we ALL needed a dose of to counter the pull of consumerism. Not a seasonal living that’s about strawberries in June but a full picture of seasonal living with all its essential life lessons.
A different kind of joy
Consumerism tells us that having, and acquiring are the pinnacle of life – they’re the joy, the aspiration we should have. The essence of true seasonal living can be applied well beyond the garden, and the timing of fruits and vegetables, it’s a guide for life. True seasonal living tells us that the times without, the times of lack are not lesser parts of living seasonally, they’re not lesser parts of life. Acquiring is not the pinnacle. The days without abundance are not just about waiting for the brighter “spring” season with strawberries and consuming. They’re a beautiful season themselves, and we don’t want to miss that joy.
Whether its doing a no buy month, being on a budget, not buying new clothes or just rewiring our brains from seeking out the next thing we’re buying – those moments not marked by acquiring things teach us to rest from the mantras of consumerism. There’s so much joy available there if we lean in. We learn to centre contentedness, and a joy that comes not from having. We just have to call them out and embrace them, like Polar Night. They’re not moments of waiting, they’re moment with their own inherent joy.
I’m a long way down the road of living a different way of life, but I realised I was still looking to the moments of having as the joy bringer. I was still viewing the “in season” moments as the best ones, and so the in-between seasons I just didn’t celebrate or expect as much joy from. This January we set out on a “no buy” month and instead of seeing it as a count down to buying again, I looked for the joy in it, looked for the learning, looked for the beauty. We focused on gratitude and the joy of voicing gratitude, the joy of the tiny simple rhythms, the joy of looking at nature. It’s shown me more deeply how consuming is so central to what we’re taught brings joy and that the vice grip of consumerism’s way of thinking can still affect us when we think we’ve step out of that way of life. But it’s also shown me just how much more joy and contentedness and beauty there can be in some of the phases of life we didn’t know could have it.
