Spirit of the Law
The Turning Feral Journal - Day 50
Day 50 - I have always been a ‘letter of the law’ type of guy. If there were a rule to follow, I was following it - I blame my suburban southern baptist upbringing. But, as I have aged I realized that in life there exists a massive gray area between following the ‘law’ and criminality.
Now, to preface, I am not talking solely about Laws with a capital L (things like murder, poaching, etc.), but also the mundane rules we are encouraged to follow in our society. An example? A little while after I got married to my wife I watched her eat sour cream that was a few days past its expiration date… I was shocked. I had always been maniacal about throwing out foodstuff past its prime and considered printed expiration dates as law. However, it turns out that she was absolutely fine after consuming it. She had opened up the container, smelled it, did a quick taste it and made a judgement call based on her knowledge, intuition, and moral compass.
Now you may be asking, “Ok, Zach. What a hero. You and your family now safely eat expired food. What does this have to do with Turning Feral?” The reason this topic is important is that if you are a rule-following suburbanite like I was, someone who relies on a system to lawfully help you conduct your day, you are in for a rude awakening when you start your self-sustainability journey. When you step out of the system everything starts to become gray and ‘open to interpretation,’ which if you aren’t used to can be jarring.
Where I moved to, there was so much gray it made my head spin and there wasn’t even Law enforcement with a capital L within a four drive. This meant that the rules I had built my identity around were now loosened and it made me question a lot of the things I was doing. Real examples included the proper dispatching of trapped animals, home defense, medical emergency preparation, etc. But, what helped us navigate this gray area was a belief that morality and compassion win out over all things, and that our intuition plays a large part in making judgement calls in gray areas. So, if you plan to strike out on your own in the coming years you need to start getting comfortable living in the gray zone of life, even if it starts by eating some expired sour cream hiding in the back of your refrigerator.
Daily Prompt: How can you embrace making decisions that fall in the gray area? Is there a moral framework you can build to make those decisions easier?:
Motivational Passage:
A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.
-John F. Kennedy
Rewilding Action: Part of a sustainable life is dealing with the death of animals… whether that is wild game or domestic animals you raise. With that death comes blood, which will inevitably makes its way into your home by hitching a ride on your boots or clothes. That vital life source has a knack for making it’s way into every nook and cranny of a floor board or tile grout. Left unattended it can start to smell and leave your significant other in a bad mood. The best solution I have found for getting blood out of hard to reach spaces? Borax. Borax is essentially a drying agent (one I use to help speed dry pelts sometimes), but it does wonders for wicking away liquids – blood included. It is a must-have chemical and you can pick up a box at any store in the cleaning aisle.