Have you been really stressed lately? Have you been whining about the day-to-day chores at home and office? Here’s a different perspective to mull over.
Thomas Thwaites, a freelancer by profession from Great Britain, too was frustrated with life. And one day decided to stop leading a human’s life for that of a goat’s. You read that right!
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“I work freelance so employment isn’t always regular. I was looking after a friend’s dog, Noggin the Irish terrier, and I was having a ‘what am I doing with my life’ moment. I thought, ‘Noggin, you are so lucky’ and began wondering how I might see life from that perspective,” UK Mirror quoted Thwaites.
The Brit was convinced that the only way to be relieved of stress was by living among livestock.
So, he headed to the Swiss Alps to join a herd of goats. Apparently, the herd accepted the man who ditched his little comforts in life. He even gave them company eating grass.
Ironically, the goat life too was expensive. Thwaites wrote to a charitable trust named The Wellcome Trust in order to fund his research on how to turn into a goat. Following the receipt of a grant of approximately Rs 27 lakhs, he began his research at the Royal Veterinary College and consequently approached a prosthetic expert at the Salford University to create a goat exo-skelton.
Image courtesy: whatsinjohnsfreezer.com
Then what? He spent three ‘productive’ days in the Alps among the goats, chilling out and eating grass. We mean grazing!
“All the points where the suit rubbed got blisters and bruises,” Mirror quoted him recounting.
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“The goats were fine with me to be honest, once they got used to me they just went about their business,” he said. “One particular goat made friends with me and followed me all over the place,” he added.
Thwaites has documented his experiences in his book Goat Man: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human.
All this reminds us of Henry David Thoreau’s slightly more practical account Walden—where one can always head back to embrace nature abandoning modern-day comfort.
