I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

Ah, the simple life...<p>My grandfather would take me along and we&#x27;d go to the neighbour to fetch eggs. He had a plastic bucket that he put them in with some old newspapers scraps in the bottom. I heard that before the war they didn&#x27;t even need money. He&#x27;d simply bring a bucket of milk, and he&#x27;d get a bucket of eggs in return. But it was of course a lot simpler to bring money. It was far cheaper than in the store too.<p>My grandfather knew what all the birds were singing. Every bit, plus their behaviour. He&#x27;d especially heed the magpie, because it&#x27;s a smarter bird. If it warbled this way, it meant that the weather would stay warm. If they warbled in another way, it meant that it might become rainy. He said that the birds knew, because their lives depended on it.<p>Another more commonly known sign is dependent on where the magpie makes its nest. If it it&#x27;s high in the tree, then it will most likely be a warm and sunny summer. But if it is tucked way down in the tree, the summer will be cold and wet. It makes sense. There&#x27;s more protection from the elements further under the leaves, but it&#x27;s also colder there. If I were a magpie, I&#x27;d want to make a warm and nice nest for the summer, but all that could be ruined if I didn&#x27;t heed the weather.<p>One day, the grouse was seen perching atop the family house. When I told this to my grandmother, she went silent at first, and then she told me that it means someone will die in the family. This was of course terrifying news to me. But it also turned out to become true, because my grandfather also died that year. May he rest in peace.

&quot;This valley is cut in the shape of my heart&quot;. I&#x27;ve known farmers like him, bachelors who are mild mannered and love their lives and the extended family that comes with living an entire life in one valley. He maybe goes to Sunday service for socialization and the local pub to watch the game, and as long as his sheep are healthy and the sky does what it promises (because he knows the day before always if it will rain), the peace he feels is the result of being in place, of not creating too much fuss, the satisfaction of seeing the stone walls he built in his 20s holding strong and knowing they&#x27;ll be there long after to tell his story. He leaves behind him more of a legacy than many of us.

Im nowhere near the extreme of this guy but I cook a vegetable soup and eat it 4-6 days a week every week for dinner. I save the calories and good (edit: interesting) cooking for restaurants.<p>I mess around with the soup occasionally trying new flavoring or techniques but its the same damn soup and I like it. Its easy to make, keeps well, costs nothing relative to output, and leaves me time to think about other things other than food. Also its very healthy.<p>At this point its just a habit. Sunday or Monday evening is soup making time. Two hours nets me two weeks of food.

Happiness - he&#x27;s found it.<p>Sure, he&#x27;s an extreme and very few want to emulate it because there&#x27;s a mild element of delusion. But, he&#x27;s found the thing so many of us work our entire lives for only to never find.<p>Part of life is letting happiness find you, part of life is finding happiness, and part of life is pushing away things to find happiness in what you have.<p>I say, well done.

My great-grandfather was traveling to USA for work back in 1912. He came back after 6 years and settled in his village becoming its head. Almost everybody in my family knows this story and it&#x27;s indeed fascinating, because at that time people rarely moved anywhere.<p>And now we are fascinated by a man living in the same place all his life. It&#x27;s funny how the concept of norm changes in 100 years.

There is value in finding your place in life and being content with it. Yes, you might be able to change it, perhaps to conform to more traditional standards of &#x27;success&#x27;, but why bother if you&#x27;re happy as you are?<p>If we humans optimize by happiness, then we should have nothing but envy for a life like Wilf Davies leads.

Trying to eat something different everyday is an American obsession that I&#x27;ll never understand. It&#x27;s just so stressful and inconvenient. I grew up in a small town where eating the same for dinner everyday was extremely common. Tea or coffee and bread. The only variable would be what you put in your bread. Some days it would be butter, some days it would jam. Some days it would be honey, some days it would be avocado.

This article hit home to me.<p>I married into a traditional small town Indian family last year.<p>One of the biggest idealogical challenges I&#x27;ve faced is the duality of ambition. My family in law live similar to the farmer. Low entropy. I know where they will be every day every 15 minutes, what they will eat, with little exception.<p>It&#x27;s such a stark contrast to my personal life, which has been characterized by the constant need to improve, challenge, and adapt. I don&#x27;t know what I&#x27;ll be doing 15 minutes from now let alone 2:00 - 2:15 a year from now.<p>I personally am not an absolutist, and so I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s a particular lifestyle that is wrong or right, but it&#x27;s an salient dichotomy and something that I&#x27;ve found challenging to reconcile in practice.

This is similar to Sven Yrvind&#x27;s philosophy on eating at sea.<p>&gt;I will eat twice a day, breakfast and lunch four hours later.<p>&gt;...<p>&gt;I say, “Cows only eat grass and wolfs only eat meat”<p>&gt;Modern society is so boring and there is so much food that we have to be stimulated by spices and chefs and different foods to eat. At sea in a small boat its different. Life itself out there is so interesting that I do not need stimulants.<p>&gt;My breakfast consists of one can of sardines, one slice of dense dark rye bread and muesli.<p>&gt;...<p>&gt;My lunch is the same as breakfast but no sardines.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yrvind.com&#x2F;provisioning&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yrvind.com&#x2F;provisioning&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sven_Yrvind" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sven_Yrvind</a>

&gt; She has two carers who come in four times a day, and they are wonderful.<p>My dad arranged something similar for my mom in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. It is nearly impossible in the US, I don’t even know if you can still do it without being wealthy. It required long term care insurance prepaid for years, and it was still a nightmare of weekly paperwork to manage all the claims. The care for his sister, and treatment and recovery for multiple strokes - out of reach for many farmers around the world. This man is very lucky indeed.

I&#x27;ve found a lot of freedom in similar decisions. Not sure I could take it to the same level, but even just having a small set of meals to eat every week makes shopping, cooking and planning around expiry dates so much easier. Clothes can be similarly hacked such that everything goes together and every combination is something you are comfortable wearing, leaving you never needing to consider what to wear. I&#x27;ve optimised these to the point that they take up nearly zero mental space and generate no stress. In my case, I use pre-prepared frozen meal delivery service, but I know some meal preppers who find similar freedom that way. Don&#x27;t cook or order anything you won&#x27;t eat at any arbitrary time, and you&#x27;ll never be stuck with wasted food or indecision. And for clothes I found a small set that works for me and can be worn in any given situation (except formal, though that doesn&#x27;t impact me in any way).<p>I see a lot of comments that seem to see all the things you miss out on in this situation. But in my mind, it frees up a lot of mental effort, time and stress. If I ever get bored I can go to a restaurant and eat something wild and it will be all the more exciting given I don&#x27;t optimize for excitement or luxury in my everyday steady-state.<p>When Soylent came out I was super excited about this idea. Don&#x27;t think about three meals a day that you normally fuss over, and instead have two predictable, quick meals and optimize to make the third one amazing. Soylent was OK, and DIY soylent offered some hope too. The third meal WAS always amazing, in a relative sense, and tasted better somehow than when I had the same thing before this diet. Unfortunately liquid diets are just not satisfying to me and so frozen meals won out.<p>I&#x27;d love to find other areas of my life that can be similarly optimized. I have hope for bill management services to take the annoyance out of juggling payments etc., and roboinvestors or similar automated financial services. Doing these things manually offers no excitement and no added value beyond the transitively provided service so I don&#x27;t think they should take up my life.<p>The amount of time wasted across the whole human population on things like preparing meals, choosing outfits and managing everyday responsibilities must be huge and that is all time that could be spent doing other exciting or valuable things.

This guy is a saint. To have that kind of contentment and peace is the goal of most religions. Honestly I&#x27;d like to hear more of his life, would love to talk to him.

All the highly important software people (myself included) would do good to remember that farmers are literally keeping us alive while basically working 7 days a week - and in many cases barely getting by.

I often envy people like him.<p>Working in tech it’s very hard not to get lost in rat race and always go for more money, more knowledge, more everything. I’m actively trying to avoid it, but it gets to me as well. And most of my friends think I’m weird that I don’t want to get one more promotion or why I don’t want to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I’m fine where I am.

Appears he once tried to venture out and try a pizza instead, but was thwarted by Pizza Hut:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;WilfDavies3&#x2F;status&#x2F;1244888108413394944" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;WilfDavies3&#x2F;status&#x2F;1244888108413394944</a><p>Edit: Yes, just a different Wilf Davies, but also from Wales.

I find that our childhood joys imprint and become adult obsessions for some. If you grow up in one place, like this man, you may crave to stay there. If you are taken to new places frequently, you condition to want that. Happiest moments on the beach? You crave beaches. Favorite foods for a kid become comfort foods in adults. I grew up in the delta of the Danube, rich with fruit trees and amazing tomatoes. Ended up settling in a place that has great orchards within driving distance as well (every other climate felt really uncomfortable). Be careful how you condition your kids :)

There&#x27;s just something inherently satisfying about farming, growing your own food and taking care of land. Obviously it&#x27;s hard work and difficult if you actually need to make a decent living out of it, but as a hobby it has been most refreshing for someone who spends his days staring at display.<p>I hope eventually I can raise my family in a farm-environment while working remotely, and get some extra income on top of that by growing stuff in small scale.

A buddy of mine has rice and beans nearly every dinner though he knows how to cook variations so it’s a surprisingly tasty diet.<p>I’m surprised the guy in the article could go decades without eating any veggies but his diet has clearly worked for him.<p>The strokes could just be genetics and&#x2F;or old age catching up.

Wow, he eats a whole onion at dinner every day? That seems like a lot of onion to eat! I wonder how he cooks his onion.

Many of us including myself are unable to fathom living a life like this, but I imagine this man will die in peace with a flock of sheep to his name, listening to the cuckoos.<p>And he will be just as happy (if not happier) as any of us reading this article.

A britishism I&#x27;ve never come across—does anybody know what &quot;sandwiches with paste&quot; are?

I&#x27;m surprised there&#x27;s this many comments and none of them are wondering the same things as me: what does he do with that onion? Is it eaten raw like an apple? Roasted?

&quot;A lot of people, locals and birdwatchers, come here wanting to hear the cuckoo, but they don’t stop long enough; sometimes they don’t even leave their cars. This makes me feel so sad that I actually cry a bit; it pains me that others don’t get to enjoy it.&quot;<p>Probably the most inspiring two sentences I&#x27;ve read in years. There&#x27;s good in the world.

What most people don&#x27;t realize is that farmers have alot of free time.<p>Most work of the day concentrates between early hours of the morning and lates hours of the afternoon.<p>Most of your day is usually free-time. Better than a 9-5 IMHO

I think this is the first HN article that I upvoted. Thank you for a wonderful article.

I usually have the same dinner or close variants 6-days a week, then after few months when I&#x27;m tired of this menu I slowly update parts of it and it then evolves to something new. I don&#x27;t force myself in doing it, it&#x27;s often just about the simplicity of knowing that a given meal has the right balance of calories by knowing <i>it works</i> (i.e. maintaining the same weight) from one day to the next.

This guy better brace himself for internet fame, he&#x27;s got a full page dating profile on The Guardian. He might never leave Wales but I bet people come to him now.

I did the same thing when I was an amateur weightlifter. Granted, I only did it for about 2 years, but the level of peace it brought was real, especially since it made it way easier to keep track of calorie and macronutrient intake, which is important in weightlifting.

Wow. What an amazing story!. I&#x27;m glad, I started my morning with this one.<p>State of satisfaction and living in present moment is one very difficult to achieve.

Can&#x27;t think of anything that semi-reasonable would do that would make me less happy.

&gt; even on Christmas Day: two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and a few biscuits at the end<p>&gt; I&#x27;ve had several strokes

Working the same code base for 10 years could have you eating dog food every day.

I spent a time period living by myself in the South, and I didn&#x27;t have the same supper every night, but certainly followed the same algorithm: Buy whatever veggies look nice that week, some meat, and tortillas or rice. My lunch was similarly algorithmic: Sandwich and a piece of fruit. Breakfast: Oatmeal.<p>Having family members who get sick of things changes that. There are certain of my favorites that are now off limits because I made them too many times in a row. Those things have to wait until they&#x27;re all out of town for some reason. ;-)

This is not that hard to do and can happen naturally without overthinking it. I used to do a variation of this when I was single. I used to eat the eat the same breakfast (blended milkshakes with fruits&#x2F;green veggies) and the same dinner (salmon&#x2F;slice of bread with tomato and walnuts). The key was<p>a) Eat to live instead of living to eat<p>b) Being too lazy to commit more than 5-10 minutes for food preparation.<p>c) Being single where I could own my decisions and &quot;weirdness&quot;.

&gt; two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and a few biscuits at the end<p>How do you eat an onion for supper? Raw, or cooked? If cooked, how do you cook it?

&gt; I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible – people living on top of one another in great tower blocks. I could never do it.<p>He should visit - most people in London don&#x27;t live in tower blocks, and there&#x27;s lots of nature around.<p>There are wild deer in Richmond Park, and Hampstead Heath is almost indistinguishable from any other forest (and quite close to the very center of London).

It seems a lot of this comes down to personality differences, particularly with regard to novelty or sensation seeking. There&#x27;s no right or wrong, but it&#x27;s interesting that both groups don&#x27;t really understand the other.<p>For me personally, I have a very high inclination for novelty, even if that novelty comes with the risk of a bad experience. I just can&#x27;t imagine doing, seeing, eating, working on, or talking about the same things my whole life. Heck, I work in tech but keep floating the idea of opening a restaurant to my wife (which promptly gets shot down).<p>For other people in my family, they know what they like, and that&#x27;s that. Why fix what&#x27;s not broken? I can&#x27;t relate to that viewpoint one bit, but I can respect it.<p>Edit: Actually, now that I think about it some more, my desire for novelty might depend on the topic. I rotate between about three colors of T-shirts and wear the same brand of jeans every day and have no desire to branch out beyond this. Maybe openness is not a personality trait that applies universally to everything.

Glad it works for him, sounds terribly boring to eat the same supper every day, and be so religious and stubborn about it, too. Imagine living your entire life and not having enjoyed Indian food, but only had the same meal every day, when you have a choice...<p>Being content with what you have is great, but arbitrarily avoiding new experiences, even those at small cost (e.g. trying an Indian lentils recipe) is probably the biggest regret maximiser I can think of, for me personally.<p>All the other stuff about enjoying nature, his surroundings etc, is great of course. But I don&#x27;t see how it&#x27;s mutually exclusive with some of the other things (like trying different foods worldwide nature + worldwide culture has to offer) that feel more like a stubborn pride to be able to say &#x27;look how down to earth I am, compared with you fancy city folk&#x27;.

My partner was horrified to learn that I ate the same breakfast pretty much every morning for something like five or six years when I was a teenager. I always had cereal with milk. If I was extra hungry, I would have a second helping. Very rarely, I would try a different cereal brand, but I would always gravitate back to the same one.<p>The funny thing is that at the time, I thought nothing of it! It was just a part of my morning routine, not a sign of poverty or an unusual personality. I still don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s unusual at all, many people eat the same breakfast every day.<p>Yet, this <i>horrifies</i> her. She cooks a different breakfast every morning and refuses to eat leftovers from yesterday. I never had a problem eating something my Mom cooked on the weekend for three or four days in a row. Schnitzel is delicious for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

Reminds me a lot of my uncle that had sort of taken over my grand-parent&#x27;s farm and never really moved away from there.<p>I can definitely empathise with his mindset, especially after many years in the city. Though being from a culinary-centered culture, the one size fits all meal is really depressing to think about, especially that he probably can get some really good produce from people in his network.<p>Being a farmer is really something different and here in Western Europe (I&#x27;m going to assume there&#x27;s not that much difference between UK and FR farming cultures), it&#x27;s really a labour of love.<p>I&#x27;ve been lucky to have some exposure to this world through my family and people often have the wrong perception of it and quite often looked down upon by people that should know better.

&quot;Feeding the sheep and seeing how happy they are makes me happy, too.&quot;<p>That is some heavy Zen right there.<p>Also: &quot;two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and a few biscuits at the end&quot;<p>Is probably very healthy. Minimal sugar, high protein. Would be nice to have a bit of veg and that would be it.

I wonder about the two strokes. Him and his sister. Probably genetic or is it a result of the same diet they both share? Is eating an egg a day really bad for you. Science has gone back and forth on this. He would get plenty of exercise what could have caused the strokes?

&gt; I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible – people living on top of one another in great tower blocks<p>His voice of London seems to be relatively naive, since there are relatively few what I would call &#x27;great tower blocks&#x27; here.

Farmers typically describe their animals as happy. This doesn&#x27;t jive with the depictions made by activists vegans of even non-commercial farming.<p>One of you is wrong. Which is it?<p>That aside, articles like these are more about convincing the author than anyone else in my view. That doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean he&#x27;s wrong. See for example Marcus Aurelius&#x27; Meditations. He repeatedly mulls over the prospect of death, with aphorisms to suggest it&#x27;s nothing to be afraid of. Death was on his mind. This farmer seems to focus on conveying that he has every reason to be happy. It&#x27;s no coincidence that suicide rates are highest among farmers - is this man simply built different, or is he convincing himself?

It&#x27;s an inspiring article, but it left me wondering what is his exit plan. He&#x27;s got nobody to pass the farm on to, and his sister is dependent upon his care. At 72 and with his medical history, he will not be able to continue much longer.

Seventy one sheep? And he makes a living?<p>Something missing here.

Reminds me of the person that has only eaten macaroni and cheese for 17+ years: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v1TWvXwgKr0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v1TWvXwgKr0</a>

The beauty of a simple life. Away from noise, stress and all things that make one miserable. Being content with simple things in life is nothing more than a beautiful life for you and your family.

I&#x27;m surprised no one is talking about the possible connection between his diet and his several strokes. Although I love the idea of quitting my desk job, leaving the city, and running a farm, this individual sounds and looks quite unhealthy and I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if<p>&gt; two pieces of fish, an onion, an egg, baked beans and biscuits<p>every single day is a contributing factor. I&#x27;m all about simplifying life, but think we should remember that eating a varied diet is fairly important to well-being.

The first thing I thought after reading was that it&#x27;s no wonder he&#x27;s so happy and content. He&#x27;s been literally doing dopamine fast for years.

Now he&#x27;s 72, what happens if he grows too old to care for himself? How do they care for the elderly in rural Wales, when they don&#x27;t have a family?

I&#x27;m like this with breakfast (well maybe not -every- day) but I eat an egg&#x2F;cheese&#x2F;onion&#x2F;spinach omelette almost every morning, sometimes the spinach is lacking if I used it in something else. It makes waking up easier for me, and I never really get tired of it. Some mornings I spice it up a little with salsa.

Beside when I travel, I have only had 3 type of breakfast for the past ~35 years. First 20 milk and cookies (a specific type from a specific brand), then honey bunches of oats with almonds for another 13 years, and the past couple of years I switched to a different brand with less added sugars.

&gt; If I could go anywhere, it would be to the Great Wall of China. The amount of work that went into building it is unbelievable. I’ve been a stonemason; I understand the ingenuity involved.<p>There are some rich people here on HN. Can somebody pay him a week there?<p>I know I&#x27;d do it if I had 7 digits on my bank account.

It&#x27;s bothering me that he&#x27;s 72 and has 71 sheep. Somebody get this man one sheep

What struck me the most from this article was that he has had multiple strokes and was hospitalized for two weeks once.<p>His diet doesn’t sound the worst, he seems to be active, just genetics? The beans every morning? He didn’t mention what he does for dinner.

Sounds like a much simpler life that for a lot of the readers here is doable.<p>I purchased 3.3 acres of land this year to begin the process of simplifying. I&#x27;m leaving the software world over the next couple years to have a life of homesteading.

On much of Reddit this thread would have been dominated by snarky comments about his food choices and lack of variety. I was positively lifted by the HN response&#x2F;vibe on this.

&quot;People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work.&quot;<p>Very true. Especially if one never starts a family.

No mutton, no malvern?

LoL, i Don&#x27;t know why it got a lot of attention.<p>If it is for the meal i would be surprised, because he eats the most diverse meal than a few billion people in the world.

&gt; I’ve had several strokes.<p>I wonder if his eating routine might be linked to it.<p>Four sandwiches for lunch, that quite and amount of white bread for a single person, every day.

I feel like the truely happy aren&#x27;t writing articles about how happy they are. Happiness in this way is a hidden thing amongst us.

A very content man , a rare quality these days.

Stop and listen but also discover new things. There&#x27;s only so much time and too much spent on one or the other seems sad.

I like this dude.

The hedonic treadmill has a slow setting too!

Hah.<p>I eat the same thing for both breakfast and dinner.

No vegetables?

Just take a mental note while reading this article, those people that moved out, probably had to move out because there was no place&#x2F;work for them there.<p>He is a wealthy man that owns a farm. Same story about someone who would be a bartender in a local pub, where he was just an employee serving local drunks, would be much sadder one.

It&#x27;s bothering me that he is 72 and has 71 sheep. Someone get this man one sheep

I’m not trying to be mean, but there is a chance this guy has some deep anxiety and self-esteem issues which means he doesn’t even think to look outside of his comfort zone. Routine is a way of not stressing yourself out with newness and the possibility you might not cope, and fail.

&quot;An open mind is a fortress with gates unlocked&quot;

I call it “an acquired taste.” (Many things in life are.)

With that diet sure thing he had several strokes!

Does it strike anyone else as oddly ironic that he is so sad that people don&#x27;t go to the effort to hear the cuckoos, and yet he basically doesn&#x27;t want to experience... well, pretty much everything.<p>It&#x27;s great he&#x27;s happy with the life he has chosen. But I personally find people who are even slightly like that (i.e. closed off to new experiences) depressing to be around. My parents are kind of like that, and have been as long as I can remember. But to each their own.

That sounds like present-day Lao Tzu, man.

How does the newspaper find this guy?

71 sheep is a hobby, not enough to make a living as a farmer. In Australia a family farm can have 10-20x that number.

Reminds me of Steve Jobs and his closet full of dozens of identical black turtlenecks.

What he needs is a blog

Such a happy man

COOL STORY BRO

&gt; I’ve had several strokes.<p>This sums up the article

So I’m the only person who’s reading this as a parody? I’m trying not to dismiss it, I understand this might be a real person’s honest thoughts and experiences. But it has a cadence, repetition, provocation and smart innocence that could be an Onion article if penned by Douglas Adams.<p>I recognize a lot of myself and several of my family members in the letter, but I think they’d take it the same way.

Here&#x27;s an interesting thought experiment – would you (and everyone else here) have the same reaction to this article if it was written by a North Korean farmer who was perfectly happy with life being in the exact same situation as this Welsh one?<p>Would he still be &quot;enlightened&quot; and &quot;content&quot; or brainwashed, oppressed and a victim of propaganda?

This guy doesn&#x27;t really farm. If he did, he&#x27;d be in much better shape. I had family who were serious farmers (many chores everyday) and they were lean&#x2F;skinny like runners even in old age. This guy overeats and doesn&#x27;t get much activity.

To me this sounds a lot like that he&#x27;s built himself a solid foundation in evading critical thinking about himself, possibly to avoid a more serious psychological harm which he thinks he may face if he looks at the bigger picture.<p>He compares himself to the animals: &quot;<i>They</i> never ask for anything different for supper&quot;.<p>&gt; &quot;People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible&quot;<p>As a bachelor, how will he know what it is like to look into the eyes of a loved with whom you form a new family? Without watching TV, how will he know that movies like &quot;Up&quot; (Pixar 2009) or series like &quot;Breaking Bad&quot; are well worth spending their time, without incurring a dramatic time penalty in your life? Take the TV out to the porch, if staying inside is such a pain. How can he be sure that a visit to the British Museum in London isn&#x27;t worth the effort, or time, or whatever he thinks that speaks against it? Will he find laughing people in the cafes of the city?<p>All of this feels like a &quot;too afraid to discover&quot; that he disguises it as a &quot;secret to a good life&quot;. Not a <i>happy</i> life, but a <i>good</i> life. His sheeps make him happy. Like his spouse or kids could make him happy, or a trip to the city or watching 40 minutes of TV once a week. Or a delicious steak. Or riding a bike on a trail, if he weren&#x27;t so old by now.<p>I wonder if the Welsh radio station has told him about the current dilemmas which AI is confronting us with, or if he thought about where and under which circumstances all this gear he owns to exercise his role of a farmer has been developed and produced and if his lifestyle, if applied to everyone, would have made it possible for this gear to exist.<p>It&#x27;s OK if he decides to eat the same supper every day, if he prefers not to live with people, but to me this feels more like an elaborate thinking system designed to avoid something which would cause him pain, which doesn&#x27;t cause pain to others.<p>Sure there is a lot to criticize about our modern life, and many people aren&#x27;t happy living in the city and with their day to day jobs, or with their family situation, but he has built himself a very tall wall in order to be shielded from him being possibly affected by these problems and calls it a good life. Not much of a difference to a suburban man who tolerates his job, hates his kids, but has the biggest amount of fun when he jumps into his glider on the weekends, watches his favorite TV series at the end of the day and loves to go jogging every day for an hour. Or have a beer with a friend.<p>At least his sheep are among themselves, maybe some of them enjoy spending their time together and are glad to get anything to eat at all. But how would he know, if he&#x27;s just happy pretending to be a fellow sheep and calls it a day.<p>Then again, there are comments like the one from <i>telesilla</i>.

This is a shoe-in for membership in the Dull Men&#x27;s Club<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dullmensclub.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dullmensclub.com&#x2F;</a>

[Removed by myself to obey voting result of being a bad post.<p>Please do not beat the post&#x27;s corpse any further :) Thank you.]

How incredibly small-minded.<p>I respect people who&#x27;ve tried something and decided it&#x27;s not for them. But to never even try a different kind of food? I suspect it&#x27;s less that he&#x27;s found what he likes and more that he&#x27;s scared he&#x27;d find out he actually liked something else better, and has wasted those 10 years.