Simple Living

Seems that the days in which we live are filled with utter chaos. At least if one is so foolish as to listen to the news broadcasts, or read the news items online. But then, it could also be considered ‘foolish’ to put our head in the sand and ignore what goes on in the world at large.

My lifetime goal has always been to lead a life that I consider as “simple”. That means I don’t try to be someone I don’t want to be, in order to keep up with the proverbial Jones’s. We all face life choices from various different backgrounds and experiences, whether it is a genetic trait that pulls us in a certain direction or our environment, I will leave up to those who speculate on such things. My personal opinion is that it boils down to a combination of all circumstances that lead us to make the choices we make.

One thing appears to be certain. Those who have a clear vision of what or who they want to become are far more likely to reach that goal than, what seems to be the mass of people, who go along with the flow without ever back paddling or fighting the current to make their dreams reality.

To attempt to live a simple lifestyle in a ’world gone crazy’ is certainly a challenge. There are many forces that fight against simplicity. The marketplace of the world is constantly telling us we “must have” this or that new gadget, garment or ’varmint’. (Varmint, being a word I coined to refer to the 4-wheelers that disturbed my quiet former home. Don’t be offended, I do own one. There is always a bit of hypocrisy in all of us, more on those modern machines in another post.) This is the reality of commerce, which any sane person cannot deny has brought us a wonderfully inconceivable standard of living. But at a cost to simple living.

Our attempt (that would be the wife and I) to live a simple lifestyle has come to understand that somewhere, lurking in a foggy state of confusion, there is a balance wherein a simple lifestyle can take advantage of modern conveniences to improve our lives, without taking “control” of us. For example, many people gauge independence and simplicity by whether or not they are hooked up to the electric grid. Seems to us the reality is, at least in our way of life, the cost of electricity is offset by the value we derive from its use. Most people I know who want to be disconnected from the power company end up spending a lot more money and time tinkering with some alternative power source than it would take to earn the money to just pay the electric bill and be done with it. Now that is fine if alternative energy is your hobby, but for me it would be better to just do away with everything that requires electric than to try ‘beating the system’ by spending precious time and money in an attempt to be a power plant. This is what I mean by using the modern technologies to simplify our lives. In our situation it is just not feasible to turn the power off to save money. Our lives would suddenly become more complicated.

On the other hand, if our electric fails, we have the necessary backup plans to deal with an outage so that it would not put us in too much of a crisis to do without it for a few days or weeks for that matter. We can obtain water without electric. We heat our house with wood, thus we can also cook on the woodstove if necessary. We do have a small generator that can be used to keep the freezer food frozen by running the generator for a small amount time each day, which would also be used to charge some deep cycle batteries that can power some lights, phones or other items requiring power.

Our vision of simple living is this. As far and soon as possible one should strive to be debt free. If there is any ‘monkey hard on the back’, it is debt! There is nothing simple about living under a load of debt that must be paid to the bank or other institution on a regular basis. When people are young and buying a house, car and other modern ‘near necessities’, debt is a bedfellow that they must live with. Unless they make a lot more money than I ever did. But thankfully, by the time we reached the age of 50 or so, we were able to operate our small business and had our home paid for. However, that was a long sought after goal that was a priority for many years of our lives. I have lived in both pair of shoes and can assure you; the pair without debt is a lot easier to walk in!

It is true that one can live in the midst of a large city and still maintain a ‘simple life’. It all depends on an individuals likes, hobbies, jobs and other factors that play into our lives. For me a city is not my idea of the simple life. I prefer to be as far away from a big city as possible. In younger years it would have been nice to have lived as far from a small town as we could get and still have civil contact. As we approach those misnamed “golden years” it is clear that for simplicity we need to be within a reasonable range of things like doctors, drug stores and a suitable church.

Many people seem to thrive on social activity that requires them to have everyday and evening of their lives filled with comings and goings. If that is your lifestyle, I am not one to judge you. Yet, often I hear those same people bemoan their hectic life while at the same time taking no action to make the changes they say they want. This I can’t understand. Is it an addiction that people simply cannot break? Maybe. On the same hand, often times it seems that what the very active social folks really need is just a break in their constant running. Personally I spend a lot of time on the home place. Except for about one day a week most all my work is done at home. Generally I am content to just stay put, doing my shop work and a dozen other projects that are always about a small farmstead. But once in awhile I get the urge to ‘escape’ and make a trip to town or even the city, it becomes a ’vacation’ of sorts to simply escape from ones normal enviroment and go somewhere different.
More on simple living later.