Ok, hear me out. As someone who craves adventure and being barefoot outdoors as much as possible, I’ve always wondered if living off-grid would ultimately make me a mentally and physically healthier person.

Allow me to elaborate.

By “off-grid”, I’m talking life in a fully sustainable home on a large piece of land I own, with running water and solar-powered electricity. A huge garden where I’d grow all my own fruits and vegetables. I’d order protein, spices, & grains in bulk and have them delivered (the internet will pretty much deliver to anywhere on earth these days) and I’d cook my own meals from seed to harvest. I’d know every single ingredient and where it came from. I’d be creating everything I need to survive by hand, and the trade-off could potentially be a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life.

The more I age, the more I feel weighed down by today’s society. I feel weighed down by the pressure to stay “connected” 24/7. I feel weighed down by the career I chose for myself. I feel weighed down by the food I eat on a daily basis. I look around and I notice more and more people who are young, I’m talking teens and 20s, battling these rare cancers and diseases. I see fake interactions and fake wealth flexed all over social media. I see mental health at an all time low. I used to contribute these things to simply growing up and realizing life isn’t as easy as we thought, but I’ve been diving deep into these feelings and I noticed something that I couldn’t get out of my head. The less I scroll on social media, the more content I feel internally. The more whole foods and plants I eat from farm stands and not the local Shop Rite, the better I feel overall. The less fake human interactions I endure, the less angry and anxious I am.

I feel most connected to myself when I’m in the woods or by the ocean. The sun on my skin gives me endless comfort. I’ve never felt like I entirely belong on this earth until I came to realize that my life path is just not the same as the majority. I decided then that my ultimate life path is to have a large area of land that is mine. A big, beautiful home to raise our family in, and a controlled and sustainable way to feed them. I will limit my interactions to only love and family, no toxicity or surface-level conversations in which the other person isn’t actually listening, but rather waiting for their turn to speak.

All that being said- this is still a manifestation in progress.

But being so aware of how much better I feel when I make these changes is crazy. It made me curious enough to dive deeper. What is actually added to our food here in the USA? What is social media and being so overly-attached to our radiation-producing electronics actually doing to our brains? Why are more Americans suffering from depression now than ever before?

According to a Gallup poll published in May of 2023, levels of lifetime and current depression have reached an all-time high for U.S. residents. According to the new poll, 29% of U.S. residents reported that they were depressed at some point in their lives this year. 18% reporting they are still currently battling depression. Both of these figures mark an all-time high in comparison to 2019 when the lifetime depression rate was 21.6%. Understandably, after COVID-19 in 2020, that lifetime depression figure jumped to 28.6% by 2021. While current depression rose from 12.5% in 2019 to the current rate of 17.8%.

Now let’s talk about physical health. Life expectancy for the average American is now 76 years. The lowest point in nearly two decades. This is apparently being driven by an increase in death rates in young and middle-aged adults 25 to 64. According to a study done by the Director of Emeritus of the Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health, Dr. Steven Woolf, our problems began back in the 1990s. In all industrialized countries, life expectancy has been increasing. Starting then, the U.S. began to fall behind, then stopped increasing altogether and plateaued in 2010. Then in new data from 2021, there was a massive decrease in life expectancy, but an increase in death rates in kids and teens. According to Dr. Woolf, he has never seen this in his entire career.

Now, I’m obviously not a doctor but I have to admit I truly believe there is a direct connection between mass produced food and the federal control over it by the FDA in America, and these alarming new statistics. Not only is healthy and organic food more expensive, sometimes it isn’t available in stores located in certain areas. In recent years we’ve all seen how corrupt our government is. But this is not a political blog, so I’m only going to touch on food here.

Maybe this is all a weird coincidence…
Or maybe our government is way more corrupt and scary than we all realize or want to admit.
Either way, I’m sticking to my goal of living happily off-grid.

Whatever your specific life path is,
may it be long, healthy, and prosperous, however that manifests for you.