Simply Living

So, I'm finally living more simply.

Since I was 20 and spent a summer at a lay Catholic agricultural community I have talked and thought about 'simple living' a lot. Let's define it as this infectious idea that happiness and justice will come when we get rid of all our stuff and focus on God and each other. It's an idea that's truly scriptural. "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Jesus focused on his disciples and his ministry in such a complete way that he didn't seem to own really anything but the shirt on his back and the sandals on his feet. Many of the Saints after him, from St. Paul to St. Martin Francis of Assisi to Servant of God Dorothy Day, continue this example for us, helping us to see what it might mean in our time and place. They do everything from giving up wages and living on the road to refusing to touch money to opening up a house where nearly everything is owned by everyone who walks in the door.

Now, we could get into questions of extreme simplicity and unhealthy self-deprivation. And, I probably will delve into my interpretation of such scriptural and hagiographal examples at a later time. For now, let's just say that today many of these examples translate into recognizable efforts at intentionally saving money, space and energy. There's a lot of canning and gardening and buying used items. You'll find people who've thrown out their TVs and still use the most basic cell phones on the market. They knit their own socks and blankets and compost whatever they can. They get rid of many of the luxuries we come to expect in favor of doing things themselves, getting closer to the earth and spending more quality time with others and God. For years, I've been totally down with this idea. It seems to me to be good for us as individuals, good for communities and good for the environment.

I never truly made much progress in that arena on my own- I own a car, have some debt, a smartphone, a blu-ray player, tons of kitchen stuff, a spare bedroom, a nice laptop... a lot of things that make my life complicated all the time. However, now that I am married and working only a 12 hours a week, there are many ways in which I'm living more simply than ever. This is not, unfortunately, completely by choice. We simply can't afford to buy all of the distractions in which we might otherwise indulge.

We both love traveling and going out to eat. Since I was probably 18 I'd taken for granted the ability to travel a lot and go out to eat multiple times a week. On a budget like ours, those days are no more! I'm learning all kinds of new recipes, just to ensure that there's plenty of variety at dinner. I'm drinking hardly any beer (and, when I do, it's usually beer I've made). And when we go out, we stick close to home, getting to know all the nooks and crannies of Northwestern Oregon. Soon enough, we'll be composting and gardening to conserve even more money.

When we're not worried about how to pay the bills, it's actually pretty nice. I find I love riding the bus; a trip down Martin Luther King Ave in East Portland is about as much of an education for me as many of my classes at Amherst were. The highlights of my day now include cooking for Angie, curling up beside her on the couch with a book and playing with our two cats. They are, I admit, simple pleasures. But they are things that draw me closer to her and to my surroundings. If I drive myself to work, I'm as likely to arrive there angry and anxious as not. But, I've never gotten road rage on the bus. Much of what remains is mostly distraction- Hulu and Netflix and Amazon Prime, smartphones and iPods. It all makes it easier for me to tune out the problems both within myself and the world around me, numbs the pain a bit. If I'm distracted, I'm also out of touch and useless to myself and to the world around me.

Living simply, even if starts as a necessity, saves us from some unnecessary frustrations and focuses us on the people and things around us, which tend to be the people and things that are most real, that need us the most.

I hope to continue a trend toward living more simply, even in the future when paying the bills is a bit easier (hopefully soon). Let it show me how to be more loving at all times.