Living Beyond the Ego: Lessons from the Land
It has been a VERY full summer and fall, the kind that fills your lungs with crisp air and your heart with quiet awe. The kind of seasons that blur together in a golden haze of chores, sunsets, and stories told around kitchen tables. I find myself whispering, ‘How is it already November?’ The weeks have flown by, one season folding into the next before I've had the chance to fully exhale.
And yet, even in the whirlwind, I am in constant amazement that I get to live this life, this wild, beautiful, sometimes chaotic experiment of family, land, and legacy. There are days, of course, when it feels heavy, when fences lean, tempers flare, and the to-do list stretches longer than the horizon. But I've learned something sacred out here: those hard days usually arrive when I slip out of gratitude and into ego.
You cannot live on shared soil and still serve the ego. You just can’t.
Because out here, it is not about me anymore, it is about us. It is about the laughter of children and grandchildren. It is about the hands that will plant, where I once pulled weeds, about the prayers whispered into this dirt that will still rise long after I'm gone. Decisions aren't made for comfort or convenience anymore, they are made for continuity.
The longer I live this way, the more I see how our modern world has lost its way, how our culture's obsession with individualism, this constant chant of “me first”, has become one of our quietest downfalls. Anthropologists tell us that early human tribes didn’t survive because the strongest endured, they survived because they shared. They took turns. They planned for the next seven generations. Cooperation, not competition, kept them alive. Somewhere along the way, we traded that ancient wisdom for instant gratification and personal gain.
But here, on this land we call True North, the medicine for that sickness grows all around me. The land doesn’t rush. The soil doesn’t demand. It teaches patience in the slow turning of seasons, humility in every failed garden, and reverence in each sunrise that greets the same hill that it did a thousand years ago. It's humbling. Sometimes frustrating. But always healing.
I might want to move a fence or plant a tree right this moment, but first I ask, how does this serve the whole? What legacy will it leave? What roots am I setting down for the ones who will walk this ground after me? Is this change something that will make more work for others in the future? And when my impatience flares, when I catch myself wanting control, wanting things to bend to my timeline, the land whispers back: be still. Nature doesn't rush, yet everything gets done. That is when I realize: it is not the land testing me. It is my ego. Ninety percent of the time, it is ego!
When you live beyond the ego, you start seeing yourself as part of something bigger, connected to all things. You still have a “you,” but it’s softer, freer, more fluid. You stop fighting to prove your worth and start remembering you were already worthy all along. I think this may be one of the greatest lessons when you choose to live in a multigenerational home. Not only do you recognize it in yourself you see it in everyone from the youngest members to the oldest members. It allows you to grow with grace, even with yourself.
Living like this, with family, across generations, on one shared piece of earth, isn't always easy. But it is real. It is sacred. It is the slow undoing of everything the world told us we had to be. Because when I quiet down long enough to listen, really listen, I realize this is what it means to live in alignment. Not just with the land, but with love, with legacy, with the rhythm of something eternal and true. I am able to embrace who I AM, not who the world has told me I should be.
Out here, under open skies and ancestral stars, the ego fades like mist in morning light. And what remains, what always remains, is gratitude. The land has a way of reminding us who we are and whose we are. When we strip away the noise, the striving, the endless ache to be enough, we find ourselves standing barefoot in the simple holiness of belonging. Out here, every sunrise is a sermon, every fence post a promise, every breeze a whisper from those who came before, reminding me that legacy isn't built in grand gestures, but in quiet, consistent love. So tonight, I'll stand beneath the November sky, give thanks for another turning season, and let the stars remind me: ego fades, but love, love is what endures. Love is all that will remain of me after I leave this earth. And I think that is more than enough.
