Voluntary Simplicity

After attending a workshop in Calgary, AB in early May on the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, I've been inspired to do some more reading and thinking about this subject. Important texts for the movement include - Duane Elgin's Voluntary Simplicity , Helen and Scott Nearing's The Good Life and Vicki Robin's Your Money or Your Life. The Nearing's story is pretty amazing; they left NYC in 1932 and bought an old farm for $300 in Vermont and homesteaded for 20 years; after lumber companies started cutting down too much of the forest around them, they would later move to the coast of Maine and homestead there for another 25 years till their deaths.

The chapters of the Nearing's book cover such topics as building a stone house, green house gardening, and composting. They were radical anti-capitalist, anarchist types who wanted as little as possible to do with the system and so became virtually self-sufficient; they didn't believe in domesticating animals and so lived as vegans, eating fruits, vegetables and grains that they grew and preserved themselves. They sold cash crops (maple syrup in Vermont and blueberries in Maine) to cover some of their minimal expenses for the things that they couldn't provide for themselves (e.g., concrete and nails for some of their building projects). They worked very hard 6 months out of the year so that they had leisure time the rest of the year to write, play music and eventually when they got famous for what they were doing, go on speaking tours to talk about their lives. What they did was so sane (though parts of the book give me the impression that they were slightly nuts).

The major premise of the movement is that most of us work long hours so that we can buy more stuff. If you buy less, you don't have to work so much and you have time for leisure, introspection, creative expression, and community. If we quit trying to impress people with the latest fashions, buying new clothes year after year, we could save a lot of money. Same with furniture, cars, appliances, electronics. I would assume that everybody would be interested in living a more inwardly and outwardly simple life, right? Maybe at some level we all would, but I think mostly that desire is masked by deep-seated narratives and practices about hard work, owning stuff, and a general cultural anxiety about leisure, quiet and slowing down. (The Voluntary Simplicity Movement is sympatico with the Slow Movement which praises all things slow - food, travel and every aspect of life imaginable).

I don't imagine that I'll ever live quite like the Nearings; my paid work is pretty gratifying and I think it helps the world, and I'm lucky for that. Plus, our land is so inspiring to us and to stay here, I have to make a certain amount of money to keep making the payments. The Nearing's work was physical - cutting all their own wood, building their own home and outbuildings, working a large garden, tapping maple trees for syrup, cleaning and maintaining their hand tools to sustain their work. How amazing to be in your body like that and to have a genuine experience of how energy works - physically cutting your wood with an axe that will heat your home all winter, every winter, rather than just flipping a switch to activate fossil fuels like we do here.

Simplifying is a very gratifying thing and when we find one more item on our monthly budget that we can slash, or something sitting around that we can get rid of (we just sold our pick-up truck and are now down to 1 car between the 2 of us), I feel lighter and happier. We've re-discovered our local library, ditching the addictive habit of buying the books we want in favor of sharing them with our community. We avoid buying breakfast cereal and instead make our own granola. These are small acts but they make a difference in the quality of our lives. The simple life is not only better for our selves, but it's better for the earth; it's fun too.