 I've written before about Jim Merkel's book Radical Simplicity, and "living simpler" is a key component of my What You Can Do
(to Help Save the World) list. But I've never really spelled out how
each one of us can achieve a radically simpler lifestyle without
hardship or significant sacrifice. So now I will:
- Building & Maintaining a Simpler Home:
Buy or build a home that is designed for living simply. Follow the
Japanese model -- movable walls, multi-purpose, reconfigurable rooms,
and no wasted space. Use the roof as a permaculture garden, a solar collector, a meditation space, a water collector. Landscape with native species
that don't need watering, herbicides and pesticides to flourish. Use
simple, durable construction methods and learn to do your own repairs
and preventative maintenance. Share your tools, know-how and time with
others in your community helping them and allowing them to help you
build and maintain your home.
- Simpler Furnishings:
Build storage into walls, so you don't need furniture for storage.
Consider flooring (padded -- but not with chemical-laden carpets -- or
cushion-covered) that obviates the need for seating. Make both seating
and tables portable, adjustable and multi-purpose. Make them simple. Make them yourself, so you can repair and maintain them yourself.
- Simpler Utilities: Insulate. Use renewable energy sources. Collect rainwater. Use graywater
for irrigation and other purposes. Use compact fluorescent and LCD
lights. Use timers and setback thermostats. Turn off heat, A/C and
lights when you're away or not using them. Dress to be comfortable when
it's 80°F indoors in summer and 60°F in winter, and set thermostats accordingly.
- Eating Simpler:
Learn to make meals out of simple, unprocessed, raw ingredients. Buy
local, organic and fair trade products, and avoid processed and
chemical-laden foods. Learn to cook simple, quick meals. Follow the
French model -- learn about sauces, herbs and spices and how they
simply make raw foods exotic and nuanced. Become a vegan.
- Dressing Simpler:
Buy local, durable, hand-made clothing and personal-care products made
from natural ingredients and free of slave labour, animal products and
animal testing. Learn to make your own clothes, jewelery, accessories
and personal-care products. Climate permitting, stop wearing clothes
entirely.
- Simpler Fun:
Learn how to entertain at home, simply, creatively and inexpensively,
instead of having to "go out" to have fun. Rediscover simple pleasures
and share them with your community: sandlot sports, massage,
non-electronic games (like cards and charades), meditation, making
love, conversation, hands-on hobbies, playing with children and animals.
- Simpler Transportation:
Remember that every minute you spend walking adds three minutes to your
healthy life, so it "takes" no time at all. Put a carrier and light on
your bicycle and use it. Use virtual presence technology to reduce the
need to travel. Carpool. Drive a hybrid. Avoid flying as much as
possible.
- Simpler Investment:
Pay off your debts. Don't get into debt. Don't buy on impulse. Buy
stuff that lasts. Invest your time and energy in things that will make
you self-sufficient and resilient and which are recession-proof,
like your own sustainable business, know-how and fitness. Donate cash
you don't need to responsible causes you believe in -- they'll invest
your money with more focus and care than you probably can. If you can, work less -- and recapture time that will save you nearly as much as you have foregone in income, that will simplify your life further.
- Simpler Health Care: Take charge of your own health -- illness prevention, diagnosis and first-line treatment.
Preventing illness is cheaper and simpler than coping with it, but it
takes an investment of time. Learn how the system works, and when it
works in the interest of the patient and when it works against it.
- Simpler Education: Learn, and teach, how to learn.
When you and those you love have acquired that, use it to acquire
critical life skills, through self-education, collaborative learning
and home-schooling.
None of these lifestyle changes entails
deprivation or forfeiture. Living with less 'stuff' is a matter of
sufficiency, not efficiency or self-sacrifice. Living simpler isn't something you do for
altruistic reasons -- it provides the very real, tangible, personal
benefits of greater independence and self-sufficiency, resilience,
control over your own life, personal freedom, more time for things that
matter, better health and well-being, and greater personal happiness.
If you doubt this, consider this scenario:
Imagine
you are single and free from any urgent responsibilities and
commitments, and you meet someone, K, at a party, to whom you are
strongly attracted in every sense. K invites you to spend the weekend
together at the intentional community in which s/he lives. You agree,
and spend a blissful, hedonistic and educational weekend. K spends
hours each day paying attention to and appreciating your body, your
mind and your ideas: Kissing, hugging, caressing, arousing, satiating,
washing you, brushing your hair, massaging you, walking, talking, just
sharing the moment, moonlight, candle-light, learning, teaching. At the
end of the weekend K invites you to stay for sixty days and learn and
explore more about K and the community. You are able to arrange for
work sabbaticals and to defer scheduled activities, so you say yes.
Over the next sixty days you discover that the intentional community is
clothing-optional and polyamory and that most of its members are young,
healthy, attractive people who were invited before you by K or by one
of K's loves. On a couple of occasions, with K's approval and
encouragement, you experience brief polyamory experiences yourself. The
community exemplifies a radically simple lifestyle in every respect and
has implemented the ten steps listed above. People in the community
rarely leave their communal home, but entertain many visitors, and the
group seems extremely happy, healthy, friction-free and egalitarian.
You grow to love many of the members of the community.
Now the
sixty days is up and you are invited to join the community on a
more-or-less permanent basis. You ask what you should do about your
job, your home, and all your possessions still waiting for your return.
K tells you you can quit your job, and that all that would be expected
from you is to spend an hour or so a day continuing to do the work you
have been doing voluntarily and joyfully for the last sixty days --
gardening, cooking and coaching some of the community's home-schooled
children. S/he also says you can sell or give away your possessions --
you haven't missed them and won't need them anymore -- and that you are
welcome to leave the proceeds in the bank in case you ever decide to
leave the community.
Would you say yes?
This
scenario makes the decision on adopting a radically simple lifestyle
easy: It's just a choice of yes or no. My purpose for including it is
to help you imagine what such a lifestyle might be like, and appreciate
that it is not a subsistence lifestyle but a very rich and fulfilling
one. The scenario also demonstrates that radical simplicity is easier
to achieve and sustain when it is done with others in community instead
of just by you, or you and those in your household, alone. That's not
to suggest that doing so alone, or just with your family, is not
possible or worthwhile -- just that by taking it to the next,
intentional community-wide level, radical simplicity becomes easier,
more sustainable, more powerful.
Achieving radical simplicity is
a measured process, not something to be achieved overnight. To get
there, use the process that successful weight-loss and other lifestyle
change programs use: Set reasonable goals, take it one step at a time,
and measure your progress over the long term towards an ultimate
target. Don't worry about progress or setbacks. It's enough to be on
your way. It's the journey that counts. Fare forward, fellow voyager.
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