My father said this sentence over and over. Again and again, until it eventually stuck. For me, it's meant literally — an actual farm. But anyone can take the sentence and replace "farm" with whatever they own: company, apartment, app, bank account, collection, whatever.
The saying has a simple core. You should decide what happens to the thing. Not the thing, what happens to you.
Sounds obvious. It isn't.
I've noticed myself how quickly it tips. There was a moment when the prospect of money came up. A lot of money. I started building my life around that prospect. What I do, when I do it, what I postpone, what I give up. Luckily nothing came of it. I say "luckily" deliberately. Because if it had gone through, I'd probably still be living that way today — chained to something I initially thought I owned.
That's the tricky thing about the tipping point. It doesn't feel like defeat. It feels like success. You build, you work, you do, you earn — and at some point your day belongs to the farm. Your identity too. Who you are hinges on possessions. On the bank balance. On the hectares. On the valuation.
And that's the real early warning sign: when you start defining yourself through what you own, it already owns you. Not the other way around.
I don't want to pretend I'm free from all of this. For me, food is a big problem. Specifically: being overweight. There, I clearly belong to the farm, not the other way around. Food too often decides what I do, how I feel, how my day looks — and my body carries the bill around visibly. So: I'm not preaching from outside the glass house. I'm preaching from inside the glass house, because I know what the walls feel like.
I don't have an answer for someone who's stuck in the middle of it. When someone says "I can't let go, otherwise everything falls apart", I don't know what to tell them. Maybe "everything falls apart" is exactly what would need to happen. Maybe what collapses isn't the farm, but the idea that you're nothing without it.
What helps me? It helps me to keep reminding myself: the farm is a thing. An object. Like any other object. It has value, sure. But it isn't me. If it were gone tomorrow, I'd still be me. Different, but here. That separation — I am not what I own — is the whole exercise.
With small things, this works pretty well for me. I spend a lot of money on toys — iPhones, computers, cars. From the outside it might look like the opposite of what I just preached. It isn't. When a device breaks, it breaks. Insured, annoying, hassle — but no drama. A new one comes. I swap the iPhone every year and sell the old one. Devices hold their value reasonably well, the loss is manageable. With the car it's similar: swap on time, sell the old one, keep driving. I need a car in the countryside — if I lived in London, I probably wouldn't have one. My point: I have these things — but they don't have me. If they were all gone tomorrow, I'd be annoyed, but nothing more.
With the farm, the test is harder, because more is on the line. But the principle is the same.
One more point that might be different for me than for many others: I have no descendants. I probably won't have any either. It wasn't always like that. Between about 18 and 22 I wanted children for a longer period — I can't pin down the exact dates anymore, but the wish was there. At some point it left. Not overnight, more like fading.
That removes one of the biggest justifications people have toward their farm: "I'm building this up for my children. So they have it better. Or at least the same." I have no one I need to leave something to. Maybe that's why it's easier for me to see the farm as what it is — a thing that should make my life more pleasant, and not a project I sacrifice my life to for someone who hasn't even arrived yet.
I'm not talking about going without. I'm talking about order. Life first, then possessions. Freedom first, then the farm. If the farm leads to what I want from life, great. If it starts dictating my life, it has to go — shrink, sell, rent out, automate — anything that turns the direction back around.
Freedom is the test. If I can decide tomorrow not to look at it for a year, then the farm belongs to me. If I can't — I belong to it.
That's my opinion, at least. Many people see it differently. Probably also boring if everyone saw it the same way.