{"id":821,"date":"2021-10-08T17:40:18","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T17:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/?p=821"},"modified":"2021-10-08T18:51:40","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T18:51:40","slug":"life-is-never-a-straight-path-thats-what-covid-showed-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/life-is-never-a-straight-path-thats-what-covid-showed-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Life is never a straight path &#8211; That&#8217;s what COVID showed me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">COVID affected our lives, no doubt about it, but how many people actually changed their lives?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I met one. His name is Mark and he lives on a farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After working in the corporate world for many years he decided to leave Paris for the countryside. He bought an old farm in the middle of France, four buildings but they were just a little more than ruins, and started renovations to make it home.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mark saw Covid-19 as an opportunity to break away from a life of stress, deadlines and noises. It\u2019s the model society forces us to follow without even presenting alternatives. But alternatives exist, they are out there, it\u2019s up to us to go and grab them. I understand it\u2019s not easy to do, I struggle with it myself, constantly shifting from living as a hermit and meeting people in the buzz of a big city. The reason being: comforts dictate a way of working, not only living, which is really hard to have without certain facilities. Think about being a doctor, a filmmaker, a graphic designer, a travel agent without a computer, a phone, access to energy to charge equipment. After Covid our dependency from technology went even worse, now more jobs have a requirement to access a computer. Teachers, for example, are required to teach online. This not only means they have to know how to use a computer and stream their video online (with no age limitations, imagine how hard it can be for a sixty years old teacher) but also they need to have a home with a stable connection. What if that person didn\u2019t want to use electricity that much, or stare at a screen with no physical contact?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Little things like this happen all the time in our society and we don\u2019t even realise how dangerous they are to us. All the regulations are based on one model and one model only. A model that someone chose, developed and then \u201casked\u201d others to follow. Whoever that person was he didn\u2019t wait for any approval from citizens. He just declare that was the \u201cmodel\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now think of how beautiful it would be if different models exist, all equally approved by the government, so you don\u2019t have to struggle in finding alternative ways of living. One day is disliking the war when everybody around you is happy to die for their country, another is injecting something in your body when the government is saying it\u2019s for your safety. What it didn\u2019t change is freedom, our allowance to experiment with ways of living and working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So if you want to live alternatives then you are considered an outsider from society, someone to look at with suspicion. That\u2019s why this magazine is here, that\u2019s why I\u2019m still going out to find stories and reporting those to you. It\u2019s important to keep a variety of thinking, knowledge and lives. In a globalised world it\u2019s important to preserve differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Luis-filming-Mark_2.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"filming in countryside\" class=\"wp-image-824\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Luis-filming-Mark_2.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Luis-filming-Mark_2.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Luis-filming-Mark_2.jpg?resize=770%2C433&amp;ssl=1 770w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Luis-filming-Mark_2.jpg?resize=500%2C281&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Luis-filming-Mark_2.jpg?resize=293%2C165&amp;ssl=1 293w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Luis-filming-Mark_2.jpg?w=1300&amp;ssl=1 1300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>camera film in France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Going back to Mark, our hero of the day, I\u2019m happy to say he understood all this, that\u2019s why he made the big step to leave the city and move to the countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course he had this idea for some time: the spiritual trips to India he was making, the decision to become vegan, to stop drinking and smoking were all signals to a change. But to make the last step, the one that required more commitment he needed an extra push, and Covid helped him with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not only does he gain more space to think, he also reconnects with nature to a deeper level, something you can only have when you live in nature, not next to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I could spend other lines here to say what his thoughts are but I think it\u2019s best to hear straight from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Watch this interview I made on my visit to his farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\"><iframe  id=\"_ytid_31461\"  width=\"1200\" height=\"675\"  data-origwidth=\"1200\" data-origheight=\"675\"  data-relstop=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OWEe_Zm-aVM?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=0&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;disablekb=0&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Don\u2019t forget to follow our Instagram page to be always up to date with the stories we publish: off-grid, alternative living, permaculture, nomadic lifestyle.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>COVID affected our lives, no doubt about it, but how many people actually changed their lives? I met one. His name is Mark and he lives on a farm. After working in the corporate world for many years he decided to leave Paris for the countryside. He bought an old farm in the middle of France, four buildings but they were just a little more than ruins, and started renovations to make it home.&nbsp; Mark saw Covid-19 as an opportunity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[240,185,255,244,256,241,246,250,238,252,146,253,245,239,248,242,243,247,249,254,251],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-after-covid","tag-alternative-living","tag-country-life-in-france","tag-countryside-farmhouse","tag-dji-mini-2","tag-documentary-filmmaking","tag-documentary-interview","tag-exploring-alternatives","tag-from-cities-to-contryside","tag-grow-your-food","tag-into-the-wild","tag-leaving-society","tag-life-is-never-a-straight-line","tag-living-off-grid","tag-living-outdoors","tag-moving-to-the-country-covid","tag-new-life-after-covid-19","tag-permacolture","tag-what-the-pandemic","tag-what-the-pandemic-has-taught-me","tag-whats-freedom"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/silencemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Mark-countryside-life.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827,"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions\/827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silencemagazine.com\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}