In Radiance of the Ordinary, Tara Couture opens the chapter “The Dance” with a truly cozy (there’s that word again) description of an early winter morning on their farm. Waking up, starting a fire, reading on the couch, standing barefoot in the grass to greet the sun. She continues:
It’s all lovely, yes? It’s as lovely as we’ve crafted it to be. And as much as I’d like to leave us there, cozied up by the hearth, I cannot. As romantic as the soft days of this country life may sound, they are only soft because of the hard days. There’s nothing wrong with romance—I quite like it myself—but to only show that side of things is dishonest, and it’s important to identify that dishonesty wherever it exists, especially in this time, in this world, where we are inundated with images of endless pleasures. Where our culture sells us on the idea that hard work is beneath us, or out of reach. Where entertainment is our highest calling. That strife and disappointment are wrong, frustration somethign to run from, discomfort something to avoid at all costs. None of these things are true, and they keep us locked in a perpetual chase with no fulfilling destination. They are romance as a gloss, a thin veneer of gauze and plastic roses meant to keep us eating without ever being satiated. And because of that, I need to pull us out of that warm winter nest of pleasures and into the reality of what makes it so profoundly and deliciously pleasurable—and that reality is work. Hard and demanding work.