At least once a day someone refers in a well-meaning way to our moving as a “downsizing.” It is so fascinating, wrote one man to me in an e-mail, to see how you and Maria are downsizing your lives. He could not know, of course, how much I dislike the term, or how little meaning and relevance it has to my life.  The term “downsizing,” like “middle-aged crisis” is most frequently used as a club to shrink the expectations and ambitions and dreams of older people, or in the case of the latter, to ridicule and discourage men who would like to change their lives.

In America, older people are expected to get their blood pressure pills, take their tests, obsess on their health and get out of the way of people with more years of purchasing power.  There is no role for older people in our media culture other than to shrink, shrivel and due, spending as much on health care as possible along the way. Past 50, people are expected to “downsize,” and it is assumed, when they move, that they are getting tired and nervous and are shrinking their lives so they can make the great march to oblivion and vanish out of the sight of better marketing prospects. I have not and will not downsize my life. The term does not cover my life.  At age 58, I bought Bedlam Farm without ever having set foot on a farm and at age 65 Maria and I (she is younger) are buying another farm, and although some people might assume I am downsizing our lives, I can testify it is quite the opposite.

My life – our lives – are expanding, not shrinking. We are thinking differently about building things, spending money, animal care. We are challenged to be more creative than ever, to meet and engage with new people. Since we bought the New Bedlam Farm, I have expanded into e-books and e-essays, learned how to communicate with a blind pony, de-wallpapered three rooms, painted two others, studied new and cheap barn construction, planned fences and pastures, scraped paint, re-thought electrical connections, studied foundations and heating systems, found ways to clear an old barn cheaply and with great environmental consciousness, changing every idea I ever had about money, altering my publishing life,  using new technologies to communicate,  learning how to clean a century-old wood stove, planned culvert and drainage operations, met a score of new people, found new restaurants, taken completely different kinds of photos. That is a very partial list, truthfully.

Not to mention falling in love and staying there. I cannot conceive of how all of this adds up to downsizing one’s life because the acreage is less. And seventeen acres is plenty to manage.

My life is expanding, every day in every way. I do not accept the narrow and unthinking characterizations of our culture which often seeks to diminish people, make them small and fearful. I know the people using the terms with me have no such intentions, they are just repeating what they hear and assume to be true. I am happy to tell you that to the end of my days that “downsizing” does not describe my life.  I will be expanding my life, looking over the horizon, working to grow and change. How nice that I am moving to a new place and expanding my life even farther.