Oh Ron. Since you first graced my screen in 2020 (yes, I was late to the party) you’ve stolen my heart with your rugged wisdom and hefty moustache. Re-watching ‘Parks and Rec’ again last summer, I realised that my whole plan to start a blog and become self-proficient is just my way of trying to emulate Ron Swanson. Minus the obsession for hunting given that I don’t eat meat …
Who is Ron?
For those who have not yet had the joy of encountering a Ron Swanson in his natural habitat, here’s a brief overview. Ron is played by Nick Offerman in the sitcom ‘Parks and Rec’. He is the head of Pawnee’s Parks and Recreation Department but takes absolutely no pleasure in the job. This is the opposite to his passionate and insatiably positive deputy director, Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler), who loves politics, government, and especially Parks. Ron actively seeks to hamper local government and make it as ineffective as possible, actively discouraging his colleagues from doing any work. He dislikes interacting with his colleagues, and despises interacting with the public. When Ron’s boss introduced a new office design and desk to make him as accessible and approachable as possible to his staff, Ron was furious. Still, he found a way to make it work.
Although Ron appears on the surface to be an unapproachable person who will be uninterested in anything you bring to him, he is actually very caring and thoughtful towards his friends (or “workplace proximity associates”). Beneath his tough exterior, there is a lot that Ron can teach us about how we can interact with the world in a way that meets our own idea of a good life. We do not need to look to the outside world for validation or confirmation that we are living our life correctly. We should not be afraid to be ourselves, to share our interests and bizarre quirks with our community. For those who are willing to accept Ron’s wisdom into their lives, read on.
Hold strong to your beliefs and values
Ron loves woodwork. He takes pride in his work and spends hours labouring over his projects which are one of a kind. Remember when Ron’s chair was featured in ‘Bloosh’? Lifestyle Guru, Anabelle Porter, featured Ron’s chair as a must have, and the people demanded more. Keeping up with Anabelle Porter was Tom and Donna’s jam, but for Ron … not so much. Ron follows no one but forges his own path. He declined the demands for mass production because a mass-produced chair is not a Swanson chair. A Swanson is unique and the product of hours of labour and love. He takes pride in this and will not allow his work to be soiled by any amount of money.
This leaves me to wonder about my own beliefs and what I hold strong to. If I was offered the deal that Ron was offered, I honestly think I would have taken it to reach my goal of security on my little homestead where I’m safe from the world. Perhaps I need a little more integrity if I am to be the female version of Ron Swanson.
Keep it simple and take your time
From the saga of the chair also comes this secondary lesson. In Anabelle’s word’s, “you can really use it for anything”, like “a rustic accent piece” or “use it as a focal point in your yoga tent”. Ron brings us back down to reality, reminding us that you “mostly use it for sitting”; “put it by a table and eat a meal”.
Beyond the chair, Ron likes to lead a simple life free from the prying eyes of the public and the government. He will not permit his address to be on file or to be spoken out loud, and really just wants to live separate from society in a cabin in the woods. He will shop only at ‘Food and stuff’ because why complicate the daily grind of survival with multiple shops?
Now, perhaps this is a little extreme, but I appreciate his appreciation of simplicity. Things are very complicated in the modern world, and sometimes things are better when we strip it back to basics to understand those early building blocks of our comfortable society. I suppose that’s the purpose of starting this blog where I want to relearn some of those skills that we are shielded from through our modern comforts. Perhaps I won’t like what I find on the other side where the harsh reality of hard work shines through. Still, it’s all in the journey, and at least I can learn to appreciate the hard work of others that goes into growing our food, building our homes, and pumping drinkable water directly to our houses.
Be content in your own company
Ron is the epitome of solitude. He marches to the beat of his own drum and doesn’t want anyone else marching behind him most of the time. At the end of Parks and Rec, Ron gets his dream job running the new national park in Pawnee. Although initially horrified at the offer of working for government again, Lesley quickly convinces him that spending time alone in nature with limited interaction with others is actually his dream come true.
As someone who struggles to be in their own company, I can definitely learn a lot of this. I need constant white noise in the background, be it a podcast, a TV show that I’ve seen a thousand times before, or some music. I don’t know what it is, but the thought of being alone with my own thoughts is terrifying. And yet, the times that I have been for an hour long run without something playing in my ears have been lovely. I typically haven’t gotten bored, especially if it’s a new route that I’m exploring. Yet the thought of going for another long run without any entertainment is terrifying! How I wish I had your skills in self-entertainment Ron!
You can provide what you need, but it is community that will bring the joy
This is the biggest lesson that Ron has given me, and that he learnt over the course of the show. It is a lesson that he found as difficult to learn as I have! I do like my own company, and I often find the things we do to each other cruel and frankly despicable. This is one of the things that makes me want to retreat to my own cabin in the woods.
But I like modern comforts, so even when I have my own piece of land or in my cabin in the woods, I will still need other people. I would still need to pay council tax, taxes, use the healthcare system, pay for water and sewage systems, and pay for energy to keep the comforts of my modern life that I want to keep. There is little that can match watching TV in the evening in front of the fire with a kitty curled up on your lap.
As much as Ron is a lone wolf, he comes to accept and embrace his own little community in the job and institution he hates (local government). In the final season when everyone leaves local government to bigger and better things, Ron is left by himself with a group of strangers that he just doesn’t have the same connection with. Swallowing his pride, Ron approaches Lesley to ask for another job in government because he misses his community. When he lets Dianne and the girls into his life, he comes alive and finds a previously unexplored area of his life to fill. The image of Ron’s make-up caked faced, courtesy of the girls, is the only image that comes to my mind here.
The ‘self’ in self-sufficiency has always been a bit of a lie. It’s not possible to be entirely self-reliant when you consider all the thousands of elements that make up a modern society. You’d need to be able to spin and weave yarn for your clothes, collect and process the clay to form the bricks you build your house with, and extract the metals from the earth to shape into the tools you use to dig your garden. Not only have humans become so far removed from those basic skills that we learnt to develop the iron age, but to be quite frank, I can’t be arsed …
We have always relied on community and social groups to survive and live comfortably. We’ve always sold or traded our skills and brought (or stolen through conquering) the skills of others. This brings a little more comfort to our lives, but also, crucially, a little more joy. Begrudgingly, Ron gets this. Initially resistant to social interactions with his workplace proximity associates, Ron realises that he has more fun when they are around. Begrudgingly and following years of stubbornness, but he recognises it … eventually.
Conclusion
I think the most important lesson we can learn about sustainability, self-sufficiency, and freedom from the ‘rat race’ is the value of community. Perhaps this is a surprising lesson to learn from the stoic and proud figure that is Ron Swanson. But what is the point of anything, be that building wealth or trying to live more in touch with nature, without the relationships and interactions that bring our lives joy. I am lucky to live in a country where the notion of a work-life balance can be a genuine consideration of whether I take a job or leave it. Many of those ‘life’ elements of my time that bring me laughter comes from my relationships and interactions. Community is not a dirty word in self-sufficiency and sustainability. Rather, it is a necessity! Equally, relationships can bring a spot of misery. Remember Tammy 2? So, be a part of a community, but choose your community carefully.