The joy of purpose

Inspired by the life of Narara Ecovillage founder Lyndall Parris

Lillian woke at 4 am, sweaty, disoriented. Her purple locks clumped damply around her forehead. The cats were mewing up a storm, half an hour earlier than usual.

Have you ever had a dream so vivid that real life seemed like a delusion?

In the bathroom, she ran a washcloth under the cold tap till it went limp, wrung it out slightly and applied it, holus bolus, to her beetroot face. Some water sluiced down her neck, getting inside her pyjama top.

Normally wet clothes were a complete ick for Lil. Today, that seemed irrelevant.

Grabbing the nearest whiteboard marker, she headed straight to the fridge, her go-to brainstorming canvas.

COMMUNITY she wrote in the centre of the freezer door.

Then, radiating out around that: GRIEF, FOOD GARDENS, COMMUNAL MEALS, LOVE, TENNIS?

Here she paused momentarily, scratching her head, somewhat adorably getting a dot of whiteboard marker ink on the end of her nose.

She wrote a few smaller words now, with some hesitation: Alone time? Golf course? Gated?

Totally engrossed, she was startled by a sharp nip on her ankle.

‘Petunia! That hurt!’ she chided, turning to grab the cat-food scoop.

Demons fed, she turned back to her canvas.

Lil’s dream was starting to fade now, and she struggled to recall a few more details of the vision as it slipped away. It had felt so right. So warm. She’d been suspended in the loving embrace of community … like an extended found family.

Her own dwelling in the dream was small — a bolt-hole for retreat, when she needed it. Most of her time would be spent outdoors, or in communal spaces. No empty-nest couple could possibly need a four-bedroom-house-plus-office and a private swimming pool all to themselves. That was obscenely greedy — not to mention, a lonely way to live. And what about when one of them died? People seemed to avoid thinking about death at all costs, when truth be told, it was the only certainty.

Several of Lil’s women friends had lost husbands recently. They were lonely! People would rally around for a while and bring them casseroles, but it was hard to know how to help after that, and whether they even wanted company. So people respectfully kept their distance or crept away in uncertain embarrassment. But it left those women shouldering their burden alone, and living alone — and mostly retreating, further and further into themselves, whether they would have wished that or not.

Feeling something else sharp on her ankle, she looked down. It was Maximilian this time. People had told her that his name was too long — that cats could only recognise their names if they were two syllables or less — but the name really suited him. And who even had time to police syllable counts in today’s too-busy world?

That was another thing she wanted to change. The rush, the speed, the dizzy-busy of life. The hurly-burly.

In her dream, things moved slowly. Not too slow — not unresponsive, like treacle — but they seemed to move in line with the patterns of nature. People had time to walk the land each day, smelling flowers, touching unusual seed heads, watching the abundant bees, butterflies and other insects there. Meadows, she now wrote. There must be meadows aplenty. Mixed meadows. Goats? That was a possible. She’d heard they were great for ecosystem repair.

The thought of goats sent her right back in time. She was maybe six years old. One of the new baby goats, Jasmine, was trotting around in a tiny cast, having fractured her leg doing crazy kid stunts. It was the cutest thing!

Yes, goats would be lovely. The village children would adore them.

Village? She guessed that was her plan, actually. She’d build a whole tiny town. Full of like-minded souls. People who cared about things. About people. She wrote VILLAGE up on the fridge, and then circled it.

Ooh, a Café. She wrote that up too. And Tool Shed. People didn’t need ten spanners and a socket set each when they could share. The same went for many things, really. Swap Table, she wrote. The ideas were coming faster now.

There had to be some centralised way of communicating with each other, of making sure everyone was in the loop. Newspaper? Noticeboard? Maybe some kind of technological thing.

Lillian smiled to herself as she flicked on the kettle. The situation called for a pot of chai.

Pretty sure she was onto something big, Lil wanted to step back and just … take a moment. Sit in stillness, warm cup in her hands, and simply Be in the universe.

She needed a moment of peace from the monkey mind — a check-in. The dream would surely wait for her to catch a breath.

Lil took down her beautiful little teapot. She’d bought it from an artisan in Kobe’s backstreets and brought it home in her suitcase, along with the matching cups. Its decoration was like a Japanese fabric design: tiny, stylised flowers in dark blue on a neutral ground. Despite herself, she now wrote again on the fridge: International.

Lifting the lid, she gave her teapot the sniff test. It was fine. Next, she poured in a quantum of hot water and swilled that around. Essential, to warm the pot.

The smell of her chai mix was glorious. Raising the jar to her nose, she took a sensory moment.

Now, spooning some spices into the teapot’s strainer, she appreciated the green of the cardamom; the jagged edges of the cinnamon quills she’d broken up herself.

When she added the water, Phil emerged from the bedroom with a sleepy smile. He said nothing, but studied the fridge for a moment, nodding as if he’d been in the same dream. When he opened his arms in offer, Lil stepped in without hesitation. She knew he respected the sanctity of her mornings and wouldn’t speak until she did.

They were thirty years together this spring — when she would also turn fifty.

Pouring them each a cup of chai, she added the honey and milk and took hers to the table, leaving Phil to do as he liked. Cupping the mug, she closed her eyes. As she focused on the warmth radiating into her fingers, the first of the dawn birds began their chorus.

Without warning, Lillian now dropped back into her dream village — with an intensity that was startling. She’d fast-forwarded five, ten, twenty years. Lil held the same vessel, smelt the same chai, but now her dream was incredibly real. The dawn chorus was incomparably richer — louder, with a multitude of species, thanks to the forest belt wrapping the community.

In her surreal state, Lil could somehow look back in her mind’s eye to the present and see … all the steps she’d taken, to build the village.

She was drawn most to one particular step — the first, after ‘today’. In the vision, she was poised beside a fiftieth birthday cake, marker in hand. On her other side, an easel. Eyes shining, face radiant, Lil was explaining her village dream to everyone who would listen — and they mostly seemed rapt.

Right. Her eyes snapped open. The chai was drunk. She had a party to plan!

Image of cardamom pods is from Pexels Free Photos

Also published in online journal LatinosUSA in November 2025