The power of self-reliance
Modern society says we're incapable, why we need to stop outsourcing our lives and You Can Do This: practical and empowering how to guides.
Hello friends. I’m delighted to introduce to you a new and regular feature of A Day Well Spent called You Can Do This.
Every few weeks I will share an accessible and practical how to guide that anyone can do, that will hopefully help you acquire a new lifelong skill.
From growing, making, foraging and preserving food, to reducing waste, upcycling and reusing. To home improvements, gardening, crafts and fixing things. And a lot more in between.
And before I tell you about the power of self-reliance and why I think we need to stop outsourcing so much of our lives, please accept my heartfelt gratitude for the engagement and comments you’ve written on this past Sunday Reflections where we set our New Moon intentions for this lunar cycle. There’s still time to add yours if you haven’t already.
I couldn’t love any more what a wonderful and supportive community A Day Well Spent is blossoming into - it makes my heart full.
As always, thank you for being a part of it and see you down in the comments section.
The power of self-reliance and why we need to stop outsourcing our lives
When the world plunged into lockdown in March 2020 and the national pastime became social media doom scrolling, there was one tweet I spotted that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
It wasn’t lamenting the loss of our liberty, channelling our collective fear for humanity nor ruminating over an existential crisis.
It was a woman freaking out about not being able to visit her local salon to get her eyebrows done. Fair enough, I thought. A global pandemic is no reason to let things slide; the subject in itself wasn’t the problem for me.
It was the immediate conclusion she had drawn that jarred, that the only way for her to keep her eyebrows in check was for her to get to the salon.
It took everything in my power to stop myself replying with ‘can you not just pick up a pair of tweezers and do it yourself?’.
Modern society says we’re incapable
Modern society leads us to believe that left to our own devices, we are largely incapable of looking after ourselves or each other.
Without machines or the services of others, the implication is we would spend the rest of our days wandering around in a dazed and bushy-eyebrowed stupor, unable to even feed ourselves.
Capitalist culture tells us if we spend more money on outsourcing our lives - rather than doing things for ourselves - we’ll be happier.
And so we get something or someone else to: clean our house, make our daily bread, dispose of our waste, mind our children, walk the dog, make our clothes, put up shelves, grow our food, fix the car, butcher our meat, iron 5 shirts for £20.
We are taught to believe that spending our money on things and services will make our lives easier, we will be freer. And yet as a society, we are more unavailable and unfulfilled than ever before.
And what is it that’s so important that we prioritise before doing things for ourselves, or doing more of what we love? Generally, work.
We spend our seemingly ‘liberated’ time working longer hours, to further feed the capitalist machine, so we can continue to buy more bogus dreams and deepen the chasm of emptiness and longing.
Or, we spend the time scrolling on social media. Or, watching other people live their lives on TV rather than living our own.
The more we rely on these external markers of gratification, the more they make us feel inadequate, powerless and with little agency over our own lives.
As Tom Hodgkinson puts it in his brilliant book ‘How To Be Free’:
The long-promised technological utopia in which robots do all the work while we give ourselves up to reading philosophy, drinking fine wines and having sex has never materialized.
Our co-dependent relationship with globalised systems
A 2016 survey found that a third of British 25-34 year olds couldn’t boil an egg. I can’t imagine this was the case 50 years prior to that; something has gone wrong somewhere down the line.
I don’t blame us as individuals for lacking many of the basic life skills needed to look after ourselves. Why should we bother learning them when we live in an age where our every whim can be fulfilled with almost immediate effect?
Hungry? Order a Deliveroo. Can’t sleep? Download an app to read you a story. Something’s broken? Buy another one from Amazon with next day delivery.
In addition, Western society and culture in today’s modern world is in a co-dependent relationship with globalized systems.
Empty supermarket shelves have proven that if you throw a global pandemic or war into the works, the global systems we depend on for food, fuel and a lot more are in fact very fragile.
This means our comfortable day-to-day existence is inextricably linked with forces outside of our control.
I don’t know about you, but I find that quite disconcerting.
We are capable of doing more for ourselves than we realise
I like to do stuff with my hands and learn practical skills.
Whenever I’ve shared on social media something cool I’ve learnt or done - such as making country wine, upcycling a coffee table (with power tools!), putting up a shed, making sourdough - I often receive multiples of the same comment: ‘Wow, is there anything you can’t do?’
Which I’ve always found a little odd to read. Because honestly, my immediate response to that is, ‘probably not a lot’. And I’m repeatedly surprised to learn others don’t think the same way about themselves.
It’s not because I’m special or particularly gifted in any way. I just believe in myself and my capabilities. I know that with a bit of guidance, a willingness to learn, get things wrong and try again, I am probably capable of most things. So is everyone else.
When we moved into our house 12 years ago, the two windows in the bedroom needed curtains. We went to a department store and gave the measurements. I questioned if they had misheard ‘curtains’ for ‘a kidney’ - I could not believe the price they were quoting.
My immediate thought was, with absolutely no sewing experience, ‘I’m pretty sure I could do this myself.’
And so I did. I found a YouTube video, bought meters of material, borrowed my Mum’s sewing machine and cleared a couple of weekends.
Many hours later, not only had I acquired a new life skill, but I had made two fully lined, floor length curtains that looked great and still hang on those curtain rails to this day.
Sure, I could have spent hundreds of pounds for someone else to make them. But I wouldn’t feel the huge sense of pride and satisfaction every time I walk past them, still quietly exclaiming to myself over a decade later, ‘I freaking made these’.
It’s hard to put a price on such a sense of achievement, empowerment and a life skill learnt.
As Hodgkinson says:
Let us each become jacks of all trades. Every man, woman and child should be able to cook, clean and change a plug. We are in danger of becoming a radically useless world of computer-game players. Freedom lies in self-sufficiency.
Welcome to You Can Do This, practical and self-empowering how to guides
This leads me nicely on to You Can Do This, a new regular feature on A Day Well Spent.
Acquiring the skill and knowledge to be able to do something for yourself is hugely empowering and freeing. If your usual response to something someone else has done or achieved is ‘Oh, I could never do that’, I’m here to tell you, you can do this.
Every few weeks I will share an accessible and practical how to guide that anyone can do, that will hopefully help you acquire a new lifelong skill.
From growing, making, foraging and preserving food, to reducing waste, upcycling and reusing. To home improvements, crafts and fixing things. And a lot more in between.
As D. H. Lawrence says in his essay ‘Education of the People’,
Self-dependence is independence. To be free one must be self-sufficient, particularly in small, material, personal matters. In the great business of love, or friendship, or living human intercourse one meets and communes with another free individual; there is no service. Service is degrading, both to the servant and the one served: a promiscuity, a sort of prostitution.
No one should do for me that which I can reasonably do for myself.