Be Nice Or...

I was out in the barn today looking at this sign I hung on his old weathered walls the year the farm became part of me and I became part of the farm. Difficult days those were. Lots of 'feeling overwhelmed' by life. Disappointment. Waves of fear.

Many hours of wondering if I had actually lost my mind and just didn't grasp the fact yet. I found it difficult to be patient, almost impossible to feel kindly about anything.

I bought the sign. And in the crumbling leaning towering old barn up high on one of his walls I hung it on bent nail (I admit to wielding a hammer badly). You'll see the sign in the image below ~

I hung it for myself, as a navigation point for my newly forming world. I wanted to revive the part of my heart that believed in niceness, that believed in kindness. I wanted to step back, step away, separate myself from the past few years in which most of what I'd believed about work/career/humanity/life in general had been challenged at best and broken at worst. I wanted to again live my life just as the sign said:

"be nice"

("or go away")

In that moment, standing amid falling outbuildings, teetering barn, bedraggled farmhouse (with broken windows and bales of hay in the basement ~ yes, the basement) I realized something clearly. I realized that in buying this place, against all sense and caution I'd made a stand to replant my life. I'd decided to regain my soul, to begin life on a radically different path.

Exhausted  and fearful yet oddly calm in that moment. Taking one last glance at the sign I honestly understood that contrary to all logic, I was where I belonged. I sensed that perhaps I wouldn't have to "go away" because I somehow knew that within these tired old structures and amid these many rolling acres "nice" and my life were just waiting to be re-found....