What do these things have in common?
The movies: Surfwise
and Into the Wild
The song: “Society” by Eddie Vedder (in video above)
The blog: Cage Free Family
This recent article in O magazine: “Back to Basics”
When you line them up, it’s obvious, but it’s actually taken me several years to realize how deeply and spontaneously drawn I feel to a philosophy or a movement that I only recently learned the name for: Voluntary Simplicity.
In recent months, there’s been a notable upsurge of articles on this topic in the mainstream media, no doubt spurred by our ailing economy and people’s tightening finances. But maybe, too, I hope, this might also be a reflection of a culture shift in our society -- a growing awareness of the damages caused by our society’s love affair with consumerism.
It isn’t just about wastefulness and its ecological impacts (which are very real and important). I think it goes deeper than that; it gets into what happens to our spirits when we spend so much energy worrying about things. It’s about the mental feedback loop we create for ourselves when, as the lyrics to “Society” say: “You think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won’t be free.”
The more we have, the more we want; we never have it all, so we never have enough.
Even for people like Aaron and me, who have never been particularly materialistic and have always hated shopping (if only because of the crowds) – even we find ourselves sucked into this mindset sometimes. Even people who by their natures aren’t particularly materially oriented have to struggle against the huge, moving, oppressive message of our larger culture. Trying to raise children with this awareness, is, I think, even harder. I guess I’m about to find out!
Finally having a phrase for this concept – Voluntary Simplicity – really helps. At least it has helped give me a framework, a vocabulary, for these feelings I’ve been wrestling with for a long time.
What is the voluntary simplicity movement? Well, it has many definitions, but I like this one here, which is offered by a website www.simpleliving.net/main that collects resources on this topic:
When you line them up, it’s obvious, but it’s actually taken me several years to realize how deeply and spontaneously drawn I feel to a philosophy or a movement that I only recently learned the name for: Voluntary Simplicity.
In recent months, there’s been a notable upsurge of articles on this topic in the mainstream media, no doubt spurred by our ailing economy and people’s tightening finances. But maybe, too, I hope, this might also be a reflection of a culture shift in our society -- a growing awareness of the damages caused by our society’s love affair with consumerism.
It isn’t just about wastefulness and its ecological impacts (which are very real and important). I think it goes deeper than that; it gets into what happens to our spirits when we spend so much energy worrying about things. It’s about the mental feedback loop we create for ourselves when, as the lyrics to “Society” say: “You think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won’t be free.”
The more we have, the more we want; we never have it all, so we never have enough.
Even for people like Aaron and me, who have never been particularly materialistic and have always hated shopping (if only because of the crowds) – even we find ourselves sucked into this mindset sometimes. Even people who by their natures aren’t particularly materially oriented have to struggle against the huge, moving, oppressive message of our larger culture. Trying to raise children with this awareness, is, I think, even harder. I guess I’m about to find out!
Finally having a phrase for this concept – Voluntary Simplicity – really helps. At least it has helped give me a framework, a vocabulary, for these feelings I’ve been wrestling with for a long time.
What is the voluntary simplicity movement? Well, it has many definitions, but I like this one here, which is offered by a website www.simpleliving.net/main that collects resources on this topic:
“Simple living — aka voluntary simplicity — has just about as many definitions as there are individuals who practice it. Simple living is not about living in poverty or self-inflicted deprivation. Rather, it is about living an examined life — one in which you have determined what is important, or ‘enough,’ for you, and discarding the rest.”
"Living in a way that is outwardly simple and inwardly rich."
— Duane Elgin
I’d like to share a portrait of what this philosophy has meant to my family:
Before the baby came, Aaron and I went through several weeks of mental gyrations, distressed about how we were going to make room for her. Our house is 1,200 square feet, and we only have three bedrooms: one for us, one for his oldest daughter, and the third that was my office. Having an office isn’t just a luxury for me. When in school, I need a quiet place to study for 20+ hours a week. The bulk of my editing and writing work is also done from my office, and I need a phone to conduct interviews, and a quiet space without the sound of a television or household conversations to distract me.
Aaron also has an office, which he runs his camping stove business out of. It is stacked floor to ceiling with supplies, and a large shipping table, and a jeweler’s bench to do his sautering. All of that used to be done in the dining room in the middle of the house (and there was no real dining room). A year ago, he spent 6 months enclosing the back porch, to make room for his business, so we could have an actual dining room with a table.
The dilemma raised other issues for us beyond the immediate issue of a baby room. For me, it challenged what has been a concept of personal boundary that simply could not be sustained in this living environment. You see, even without the baby coming, moving into this house has been a challenge. I’m a Westerner, and I’m used to my space. I lived alone in a three-bedroom house in Denver, and grew up in a rambling ranch style home where you could cordon yourself off in a nook and spent an entire contented day in complete solitude. That most definitely isn’t possible here.
For Aaron, it challenged his notions of what it means to “be a provider.” Amid all of our talks of what we would do to solve our immediate space problem, he spent several weeks plotting different ways that we might be able to move into a bigger house in a few years – especially if we have a second child. What if he moved this money here, or refinanced that, or did this with his retirement money, or borrowed money from there? We had long talks trying to figure out how we would move into a bigger house because clearly (we told ourselves), it will never work with what we have now.
I won’t bother getting into the dozens of ideas we plowed through to arrive at a solution to our immediate space problem; suffice it to say we reached one. What is more important though, and the reason I’m writing all this, is to say that in that process, along the way, we both came to not only accept but joyfully embrace the fact that we actually can make this house work, even if we add a second child down the road, and even if we add a third (which is not likely).
I can’t tell you what a relief it is – to free ourselves from that feedback loop of “we don’t have enough.” How liberating it is to not be spending anymore mental energy trying to “figure it out” and “plot our advancement”! Every time the gas bill comes and we gasp – we also sigh with relief knowing that we have the smallest house on the block and everybody else has it even worse. Every time we feel burdened by the yard or the unending repair projects, we think about how much worse it would be if we upgraded. Every time the mortgage bill comes, we think about how the money we are saving by not having a larger house will be used to create memories instead of things: summer camp, road trips, time spent with our daughter (in the form of not having to work even more than we already do).
Instead of spending our energy toward more, we are spending our energy toward less: “How much stuff can we get rid of in order to maximize the space we do have?” Legions of people go on shopping sprees and revel in how much fun it is; we’ve discovered it is just as much fun (and immensely more rewarding) to go on divestment sprees, to see just how minimalist we can get.
I’ve sold off nearly half of my book collection; the only books that stay, after I’ve read them, are things I need for my resource library, or books I desperately love. Aaron bought a 5 gigabyte MP3 player where he has downloaded his entire CD collection, and we’ve starting selling off those. He is making digital recordings of all of his record collection, and those are going to go too.
The 10 shelves we spent storing CDs, books and records will now have cloth baskets on them to store Adi’s toys. And unlike Aaron’s teenage daughter (and myself growing up!), when Adi outgrows her toys, she will have to get rid of them. They can’t stay in her room, unused, for a decade, collecting dust. Because she might very well have a sibling sharing the space with her. We will, we hope, instill in her the same joy for living in uncluttered spaces, and the same philosophical belief in only having what you really need.
Is it really this simple? No, of course it isn’t. I wish I could say we’ve reached some higher, enlightened state of being in which we never fear or want for more, but that wouldn’t be true. It has meant compromises, and I’m sure it will present more of them. But we feel like we have made a start – an important start – in the right direction.
I continue to be drawn to stories of others, who are making even more radical steps than we are. The documentary movie Surfwise, which came out last year, told the story of this eccentric doctor with nine sons, who raised them all on a beach surfing. It’s quite a story and really worth renting, if you can find a copy. There were huge detriments to what he did (not the least of which was his children’s complete inability to ever enter high-skilled professions, because they never graduated from high school). But he also created many gifts for his children that most people in our society never experience.
I will continue to be a loyal reader of Cage Free Family, a blog kept by a family who is traveling around the country in a mobile home and living a natural lifestyle. Their model is not very replicable for most of us: The father obviously makes a solid living doing computer work, which he is able to do from anywhere. They live on a very slim budget, but few of us would even have the option of working on the road. I do, though, admire their sense of adventure and freedom, and their commitment to simplicity, and I envy the rich experiences they are able to give their children. Travel is one of the best things any of us can do.
And, finally, every time I run across news stories like this one
“Society” Lyrics
Oh it's a mystery to me.
We have a greed, with which we have agreed,
and you think you have to want more than you need;
until you have it all, you won't be free.
Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
When you want more than you have, you think you need...
and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
I think I need to find a bigger place...
cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.
Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
There's those thinkin' more or less, less is more,
but if less is more, how you keepin' score?
It means for every point you make, your level drops.
Kinda like you're startin' from the top
...and you can't do that.
Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me
Society, have mercy on me.
I hope you're not angry, if I disagree.
Society, crazy indeed.
I hope you're not lonely...without me.
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