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Home  /  Blog  /  What These Little Yellow Flowers Teach us About Living
11 November 2018

What These Little Yellow Flowers Teach us About Living

Written by Steve Johnson
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After four weeks of living here at Joshua Tree South BLM, our fresh water tank has run dry. It’s time to pack up the toy hauler, and find another place to continue living our lives.

Sash and I are still putting focus on remaining present. That is, staying in the now, and being more reactionary than preparing for the future or lamenting over the past. It’s not easy because so much of civilization is focused on defining humans on their past performance and categorizing them towards their future.

Credit scores are an example. We expend a lot of energy (and worry) to achieve a number that has only future meaning and no impact on our lives this moment.

Institutional religion judges us on our pasts, and tasks us with salvation. A lot of politics today is about taxing us to provide for the wrongs that previous generations made. Insurance is another example of assessing our history to take a risk on the future.

Meanwhile these tiny yellow flowers springing up all over the Southern California desert seem so focused on being present. They sprang up here in the midst of Autumn after an unlikely flash flood tore through only a month ago. They don’t seem to care that now is not a good time to put down root from their seeds. It doesn’t bother them that Spring is still another six months away.

They simply reacted to the presence of water, similar to how Sash and I reacted to the depletion of ours.

People spend a lot of time thinking, which leads only to worrying, lamenting, and a lot of other negative energies that deprive them of how good it feels to be alive. Thinking stops you from smelling the roses. It stops you from hearing the song bird, from feeling the gentle breeze, and from being connected to this Earth and the entire Universe.

Very little do people thank “God” for what they have right now, yet instead put so much energy into the sins of their past and their path to salvation. Can they not see the answer to their prayers all around them?

The churches, the temples, the books, the leaders, the congregations, these are all human manifestations. God doesn’t exist in the past or future, but only the present. God doesn’t judge anyone, nor anything. God is just right now.

God doesn’t solve your problems. God only gives you the ability to choose. Choose to enjoy the beauty around you. Choose to be with your friends and family. Choose to enjoy things that don’t cost money. Choose things that don’t require credit, insurance, electricity, or harming others. The Earth is so vast, there’s always room to dump your problems and go somewhere else.

Do these little yellow flowers know God?

It wouldn’t surprise me if they were closer than we are to God, the Universe, and the substance that brings us all into harmony.

If the vagabond life has taught me anything, it was that. The 2 1/2 years of living only with my motorcycle, and no roof of my own, dumped me into the deep end of an entirely new paradigm on living. Since then, acquiring a toy hauler and pickup truck, I now enjoy my own roof, but still vagabonding across the country.

I realize that even I must still maintain an income to afford gasoline and propane. I still must carry insurance on my truck and toy hauler. But at this point, I no longer care about my credit score. If we don’t like the RVers camped 50 feet away from us, we pack up and leave. We prepare for hot and cold weather by moving to other parts of the country. We live more reactionary than we used to, and hence we worry about the future, and feel sorry about the past, a lot less.

A lot of RVers see fulltiming as an opportunity to travel and see more of this planet. But a lot of RVers also see it as an opportunity to get closer to the Earth itself. It’s a chance to remove themselves from the constraints of urban and suburban life, from humanity, and from all the layers that divert our attention from the present. Staying mobile is not allowing the moss of History’s lament and Future’s worry to grow all over you.

Steve Johnson
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Having first started riding in 1985 on a Kawasaki KZ400, Steve has ridden all across the United States and Canada. He currently travels full time on his Honda ST1300, living wherever he can find a friendly roof. Follow him on, "Motorcycle Philosophy".

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I'm a "Man in Black", one of those guys who goes around dressed in black suits, looking for people who were abducted by UFOs so that we can keep them quiet. Sash and I travel around in this trailer awaiting orders from headquarters for my next assignment. I can't show you the details of my work, but I can show you how I live.

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