 © Joseph Mack Branchcombe
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Why Live Simply? Click to read Click to |
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© Joseph Mack Branchcombe
|
Why Live Simply? Click to read Click to |
Why Live
Simply?
Our home is a place where the time-honored practice of conversation thrives. We choose to
live free of TV, video games, and the Internet. Talking and closeness come easily.
Tonight, for example, our twenty-four-year-old neighbor, Renée, dropped in for a visit.
She is a spirited gymnastics instructor who swaps errands, skills, food, and affection
with our family. Renée, my husband, and I sat around our table and indulged in ideas and
laughter.
When we opened the door to say good-night, the frogs’ chorus rising from our garden was louder than the cars down on the highway. None of our neighbors have pole lights, and all the porch lights were out. The moon was full, and the field in front of us was blanketed with soft light.
In our house there’s no need for virtual reality. Hours after the evening’s conversation, the voice of a red-tailed hawk called me from my reading chair, letting me glimpse a superb reality. I watched as the hawk, illuminated by the moon at midnight, flew from the old oak beside our house to the tall cypress behind us, then to a pine farther away. It returned to perch atop the cypress again. I was awed by its size and the intensity of its cry.
Here we have all we need, though our house is small and lacks some amenities. When I bathe, I hang sheets on the adjoining clothesline so neighbors won’t see me au naturel, because our only bathtub is an old porcelain tub outside. After our daughter was born, we converted our home office to a third bedroom. I created a new office in our former dining nook, with an eastern view of Mt. Toro and a southern view of the fridge. We moved the dining table to the living room. When I first suggested it, my husband howled: "Eat in the living room?" But the unfamiliar arrangement sufficed.
It’s easy to forget the plight of farm workers, hotel and restaurant workers, and other poor here in Monterey County. The Carmel-Pebble Beach-Monterey stretch of California’s central coast is affluent. On peninsula roads, we see Porsches and Jaguars for mile after mile. One’s perspective can be lost.
Someday we may move from the Monterey Peninsula to an area where real estate prices are lower and reflect the functional value of a house. There we could have a larger place. Still, while living here, we’ve learned that less can mean more.
Instead of buying apples from Argentina or blueberries from New Zealand, we buy local fruit in season. Rather than purchase a shiny car fresh off the assembly line, we repaint our 1976 vehicle. And we mend and dye a bathrobe for longer wear before buying another one. Are we deprived? No. I step outside the hot kitchen at night and swing the lettuce dry in a worn pillowcase as I look at the stars, never regretting that I have not purchased a plastic salad spinner. We are expanding our personal freedom while conserving resources and helping to create a future where everyone can live well.
As a seventeen-year-old leaving Mt. Pulaski, Illinois, for university life, I was introduced by a great aunt to New Thought Christianity’s prosperity principles—ideas which made me aware of the bounty of this world. Twenty-five years later, these ideas and those from other traditions often seem to be confused and twisted into "You can have it all." Are material possessions so significant? And must people with fewer material goods be looked upon as having "poverty consciousness"?
Gaia, our Mother Earth, sustains over five billion people, including more than two billion children who require nourishment, shelter, and health care. Will those of us in the United States, Japan, and other first-world nations pluck the abundance of this planet to decorate dreams for our own children while other children starve? Will we persist in defining national success by gross national product (GNP) and per capita consumption? Or will another way of thinking—less means more—replace the consumer mentality and ease the way toward a wiser, more just use of resources?
Periodically, I reconsider my personal and household practices. Can my teenagers take the bus, or must I drive them in the car? Does my little one need a colorful plastic playground set, or will a rope swing tied to a tree and sand in an old tractor tire be as much fun?
Choosing a simpler life doesn’t mean living in poverty or deprivation. Simplicity merely calls us to address our genuine needs, and to discern what is most valuable.
In July of 1990, when my father died, people formed a long line extending from the door of our small-town funeral parlor. Many stood for hours in heat and humidity, waiting to pay their respects. Their presence attested to my father’s true wealth and achievements. At the time of his death he was a retired maintenance worker, and, to judge by his bank account, he was never a rich man. He would consider his greatest wealth and achievement loving and being loved by his wife, children, and friends. He had long found fulfillment in people, not things.
There are myriad styles of living. Lavish images of "the good life" are widely broadcast. But such a life is beyond the means of most people, is often devoid of satisfaction for others, and incurs heavy social and environmental costs.
Why not measure personal and national success in harmonious relationships, freedom to enjoy a relaxed pace, healthy wildlife, smog-free vistas, and a common experience of joy? The GNP could be replaced by the OSP—Optimism, Sustainability, Peace.
In the morning I awaken to my daughter’s soft voice as she reads from a favorite book. Songs of the finch, warbler, and mockingbird cheer me from sunup to sunset. If we use prevailing methods for calculating prosperity, such blessings are left out of the calculation. But we are a self-determining people. We can apply our own standards and assess for ourselves what has greatest worth in our lives. And we can choose and cherish the gifts of living simply.
Profile
From the center of this gathering, Mari Dehmler offers to each of us a kind word, a small gift, a humorous story. Her spirit dances. It brings people together with tenderness and compassion.
Outside the tepee in more common surroundings, she conducts the daily ceremonies of her life with love and simplicity. Many friends follow her quiet footsteps.
—Sandi Griffiths O’Neil
Bio
Mari Lynch Dehmler
Place of residence: Monterey, California.
Birthplace: Lincoln, Illinois.
Grew up in: Mt. Pulaski, Illinois (a small town where Abe Lincoln practiced law)
and on nearby farms.
Day jobs: Freelance writer and editor. Waldorf-inspired homeschooling parent.
Education: Southern Illinois University, President’s scholar.
Serial publications: Your Health. Well-Being. Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Professional contributions: National Writers Union journalism contract trainer.
Delegate to NWU national assembly.
Awards: Honored with the privilege of mothering three souls—Nathan, Paul Noah,
Sierra Grace.
Current project: Children’s picture book.
Favorite book: Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David
Guterson.
Beliefs: "Truth is one, paths are many." Lutheran heritage.
Hope: That all children be cherished and nurtured in a manner recognizing their
wholeness.
Cravings: High mountains. Making music. Visits with faraway loved ones.
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