Conscious Choice: The Complex Search for the Simple Life

March 2005 | BackWords

The Complex Search for the Simple Life

by Robin Olson Mayberry

I AM A SIMPLICITY CONVERT. I may have been raised to be a proper cubicle drone slaving for the next big-ticket item, but I never was much good at it. The moment I discovered simplicity as the antidote to compulsive acquisition, I was in for good.

In my Pentecostal fervor, I have scribbled every purchase in a notebook, carted boxes of junk to the yard-sale table and recalculated my sweater count. I have improved our household recycling percentage and reduced my working hours. I have read all the books, articles and essays I can find. On the subject of simplicity, I am informed.

So what was I doing at the cell-phone display at the local home show? Comparing models, that’s what. Asking seemingly relevant questions about calling plans and roaming areas. Trouble is, I have no need for a cell phone. No matter how I try to rephrase it to myself, my desire for a cell phone is just that, a desire. Everyone else has one, beeping and twirping, causing them to root through purses and pockets, giving them the look of importance as they conduct the most mundane business. I want a cell phone — a largely useless, expensive, unnecessary cell phone — to belong.

Therein lies the problem of simplicity. It’s exhausting to swim upstream. It’s painful to be different. Society approves of acquisition, distrusts downshifting, and freely exerts pressure to keep up in the troubled world of ownership. Sometimes, any brush with the consumer culture is a kick to the back of simplicity’s knee. Suddenly the world is a whirl of catalogs and sale racks, commercials and things that shine and smell like leather.

All the optimistic simplicity literature seems to dance around this bald truth.

Stuff is Fun

It feels good to spend money. Shopping centers are meccas of light and color and flashing gadgets to numb and enchant, effectively blocking the angst of modern living, even if temporarily, even if at too high a cost. Money makes things easy. Simplicity is hard.

When I first discovered simple living, I spent an enchanted period under what 12-step programs call the “pink cloud.” Surrendering materialism gave my life a new meaning. I held everything up to its rosy light: my work hours, my family time, my CD collection. It was a revelation. The very idea that I did not, in fact, need to spend my life working and spending was as liberating as letting a bird out of a cage. Yet at times I still find myself perched on the threshold, talking about freedom and secretly, wickedly, craving the security of base materialism. The right hand cleans out closets; the left becomes increasingly clever at defining need and tries to fill the closet again, such as the need for the right summer sandal.

Until I discovered simplicity, I had no idea how soothing stuff is. Or how much it says about us to ourselves and our neighbors. I never really thought about how little effort it takes to drive to a 20-minute oil-change center, or how that correlates to the effort of going to work every day to pay for such conveniences. Nor did I pay much attention to the fact that our society is using up more than our share. I was conditioned, and it felt good. At least, it felt comfortable.

Simplicity Isn’t About Comfort

Buddha says there is no change without discomfort. Well, I’ll second that. Simplicity isn’t about comfort; it’s about authenticity, and that takes a lot more work. In a culture of luxury and convenience, the concepts of work and constraint look grim, like a battered yoke on the shoulders of cantankerous oxen. It’s work to relearn how to express oneself without excessive symbols of status; it’s constraint to thrive without overspending.

But sometimes sheer hard work yields a better harvest. I know that since I got serious about simplicity, I have more time, more money, and less stress. I no longer feel that I have to climb some desperate ladder, the flames of debt at my heels, some impossible status goal always a few rungs higher. I can bump up against the roof of enough without trying to sledge my way through. I am more satisfied, more in line with what I feel is most important, and, consequently, more at peace.

Standing at the cell-phone booth at the home show, some resilient part of me remembered this. I walked away. It was a small yet significant moment, a moment when I recognized that even if I do perch on the threshold of consumerism, I can’t return to the cage.

Robin Olson Mayberry lives and writes in Ellensburg, Wash., with her husband, two children, pets and plants. Under the circumstances, she keeps things as simple as she can.

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