Baldanders

So I was watching this movie yesterday night. This Jewish family flees from Nazi Germany to live in Kenya, on a farm in the middle of nowhere. I watch in awe as the aristocratic wife adapts to a simple life. I feel enchanted as the husband learns to hunt and dig wells. My heart swells. I am positive now. THIS is how I should be living! Until the moment I fall asleep everything seems to make sense. I should quit the stress of my metropolitan life and flee to a farm myself. Happiness is possible with so little. And after all what’s all the fuss about? Why do I need a bigger TV or a car that reaches 180 mph? I weigh the pros and cons, and can’t make myself reach a different conclusion! To a farm I go. I ponder how to convince my wife, calculate needed expenses and…eventually I fall asleep.

In the morning, the alarm clock rings at seven thirty. As I brush my teeth, I have a vague remembrance of the previous night’s project. It takes less then five minutes of cool reasoning to crash down the logic of the feverish planning. My regular (mediocre?) life resumes.

“And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”