Growing up the way I did was both tough and rewarding.
The rewarding part is not really able to be appreciated until I got much older.
While I was in it, the way I grew up seemed stupid and unnecessary. Our house had no HVAC. There was no cable TV or much TV of any kind. There was one phone that my parents put in, although reluctantly. See, my parents were very much committed to a very simple and natural lifestyle. So my sister and I had to deal with the realities of my parents lifestyle commitment. I remember going over to someone’s house during the winter and all we did was move a thermostat on the HVAC to get the house toasty warm. At our house, we had a wood stove. That wood stove gave off tremendous heat but, it didn’t come without a great deal of effort. The same thing can be said for air conditioning or HVAC cooling. It was non existent in our home. While we didn’t live so far south that it was miserable for months and month. There were plenty of times where I made sure I was sleeping at a friend’s house to enjoy the cooling of the HVAC on a blistering summer day. However, as I look back on it, that life really helped me forge my own. While I took some of my parent’s views with me into adulthood, I still decided on my own path as they expected. However, there isn’t a day that I don’t touch the HVAC setting in our house and think of how it was without it.