Greetings from the summerhouse

Hello and greetings from where I am right now: our family summerhouse. This overly long foreword brings us to the topic of the day, which is:

To be happy, make your life harder.

It seems that whenever I'm here (at the summerhouse), life becomes somehow more special. Days fly by. Schedules dissolve and get more fluid. Trees make music in the strong wind from the bay.  The seawater is delightfully cold for swimming.

There is also no running warm water and no bathroom, only an outhouse. To survive the cold autumnal night, you have to heat the fireplace every evening and keep it burning for hours before going to bed. To take a shower, you first heat water in a tank connected to a hearth, then add that and some cold water in a bucket and make a mixture of your desires temperature, and then scoop it with one hand while washing yourself with the other.

This is far from the modern conveniences of my home, where we also have a comfortable bed and a widescreen television and an ice cream maker and a grocery store within walking distance.

But I suppose that is exactly it. Life is harder here. Thus it is also more relaxing, more joyous, and somehow more meaningful. At home it's easy to get lost in the modern ways, the gaming, the opportunities. Here, you have to put in some effort, which conveniently prevents you from having time to over-analyze every little thing you do.

RK