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In retrospect, this small book has become the center of my writings, as is evidenced by my use of its cover as the website logo. It didn’t start out that way.
Judy and I had lived aboard our 42 ft. steel sloop Swan of Tuonelafor thirteen years. The first seven of that wonderful time was in Toronto, the last half of it in the Bahamas. We were down there in the winter and up here, mainly running a café on Amherst Island, in the summer.
Due to old knees, we sold her and moved back ‘on land.’ How to live? Our values and dreams dictated that we choose between a Tiny house and shared living, not co-housing, but where people share the same house, having to cooperate and get along. During the year or two that we searched, schemed and dreamed, I read all I could find on Shared Living. It wasn’t much. There were volumes on ‘Giving’, but almost nothing on real sharing. So, I wrote the book.
It turns out that our culture is, without-a-doubt, the least sharing society the world has ever seen. The more I tried to find examples of sharing, especially shared living, the more isolated and alone I felt. Luckily, for the previous twenty years or more, I had collected sayings and quotations that were meaningful to me. It soon became apparent that what I had to say regarding the topic was hardly worth printing – it was just too short to make a book. But when I started to read through my saved quotations, I realized that the size of the book could be doubled if I added the words of other people regarding the topic. So, I did.
When opened to any given page, the right side is written by yours truly. The left-hand page is filled with much wiser words, from others down though the years and from all over this wonderful earth. This enabled and encouraged me greatly. I was not alone. It reminded me that sharing is a most basic and fundamental characteristic to us as humans, that we couldn’t have developed and succeeded as a species without it. It also made plain the fact of just how shallow we have become, and how endangered our anti-sharing culture has left us.
I wrote the book in preparation for our shared house. We now have been living this way for over four years. It’s hard to imagine any other lifestyle. Even though we five are still quite alone, we consider ourselves lucky, and do our best to share with others. Hence this whole website.
Thanks for allowing me to share this with you.
Anthony
