Newsletters: January-February-March 2010
The Art of Doing Without
By Michele Hatton
I recently helped a friend sort through his parent’s lifetime of possessions. They had recently died and we had, what I thought would be, the daunting task of sorting through 90 years of accumulated stuff. Boy was I wrong! What I did find was the prudence of a generation past, when things were salvaged and repaired, collected, retrofitted and cared about.
We uncovered a drawer full of shear stockings, clean and neatly folded, with prescriptive notes attached to each; “runs in toe and upper thigh—wear with blue trousers and closed-toe shoes.” We discovered bundles of salvaged rubber bands, lead refills for pencils, and a perfectly usable manicure set (60-years old). I had to step back to consider what our current economic slump implied. What does it mean to do without? Without what?
Living simply is not a new idea. The Christians were preaching it 2,000 years ago, "Give me neither poverty nor wealth," (Proverbs 30:8). What is new is the unbridled consumerism that limits our pursuit of a meaningful life, undermines our environment, and fosters our unsustainable economy. More than idle thought, living simply offers a blueprint for survival.
The Simple Living Network defines simplicity as “cutting back on trivial distractions, both material and non-material, and focusing on the essentials.” How do we do this? Two steps: Identify what is most important to us. Eliminate everything else.
Owning fewer things means enjoying what we do have more. It means actually getting to use those things. It means less time spent maintaining things. In turn, less clutter means fewer distractions from what is important like family, food, pets, nature, art and study. Less clutter means needing less space. Less space costs less money which translates into fewer work hours. And so on.
In December 2001, on the 100th anniversary of the Nobel prize, 100 Nobel laureates offered us a warning, “With a population of 9 billion right around the corner, global climate change, the depletion of water and cheap oil, a burgeoning population, and a growing gap between the rich and poor, we are converging into a whole-systems crisis…If we are to...leap forward, it will surely include a shift toward simpler, more sustainable and satisfying ways of living.”
Indeed, the recession is pushing us toward a new paradigm: the low-consumption, high fulfillment lifestyle. Here we discover in our “withoutness” the treasures we left behind. Here we find the art of doing without.
