Back to basics: Living with simplicity

By Lionel WIJESIRI

Less is more! Many have begun to realise the meaning of this philosophical note. They feel better with less on their minds, with fewer things to worry about. For the rest, it is almost impossible to shake the ever growing world of material possessions and desires.

Our very society is based on this consumer mentality. But at some point we break. At some point, our humanity is lost because we are not feeding the invisible force inside of us.

Our creativity dwindles, our intuition is lost, our energy drains and our inspiration stifles.

This is no way to live. If this is how you feel, then the monster has already taken over. If you say, "It is impossible to live in a consumer world and still have a simple lifestyle", then you are wrong. It is possible. Simplicity can be a state of mind and one can still enjoy material items, there just has to be a balance. It doesn't mean one has to sacrifice the "good" life. Rather, pick the things that bring you happiness and peace and let go of all the rest.

Credit

The other day, I read a comment by a renowned Buddhist leader. He said, "People sacrifice their health to make money. Then they sacrifice money to recuperate their health and become so anxious about the future that they do not enjoy the present. As a result, they do not live in the present or in the future. They live as if they will never die and then die having never really lived." It makes sense, isn't it?

This process (known as consumerism) began innocently enough. At first they were a growing number of pleasant conveniences for housewives in the 1950s, then a car for everyone with the gradual and inevitable erosion of mass transit, then the omnipresence of things and chemical products technologically unimaginable a few decades earlier.

With this came a growing a availability of consumer credit and debt to make things available, the over-dependence on labour saving devices, total dependence on the car and absolute necessity of full time work, the two income household to pay for more and more, then the commodification of labour and the discarding of loyalties to our fellow citizens and taxpayers. The ongoing disenfranchisement of people from our own community is replaced by commercial transactions with distant strangers - where will it end?

Overwhelmed by consumerism and sobered by the economy, more people are beginning to embrace the less-is-more philosophy of simplicity, trading possession obsession for personal fulfilment. They have discovered that enough really is enough.

Take, Kanthi - a professional management accountant working as head of finance in a blue chip company. She wanted a simpler life; not a simpler way to cook her meals; not a simpler way to drop five kilos; not a simpler mop and broom system that traps lint in those hard-to-reach places. No, the goal was nothing less (or more) than a simpler way to be.

"Essentially, I wanted to stop consuming so much. I wanted to let what I have be enough." Kanthi, 37, a good friend, tells me this as we met at a workshop seminar.

"A few years ago," Kanthi said, "I was married and doing the golf club thing, and I met some friends who were living very simply. I saw how much happier they were than me. They were authentic. I realised then that the endless shopping was not making me happy. I saw there was more to being alive than collecting possessions."

For the past 14 months, she has been teaching herself how to be free of the burden of too much. "Many of my friends from my old life think I'm going nuts. But my true friendships are getting deeper. The other people who do this, we make time for each other. We care about the community. We volunteer. We create time to do the things we believe in, in lieu of just mindlessly accumulating."

"Money doesn't buy you happiness" may be a cliché, but science supports the idea. In 2005 Tim Kasser, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology and the author of The High Price of Materialism, published a study that compared 200 volunteers with 200 typical Americans. "You hear that in order to be happy you need lots of money or stuff," said Kasser, "That just didn't turn out to be true." He says his experiments suggested that the very things society teaches us to crave - wealth, status, prestige - can actually lead to persistent feelings of depression and dissatisfaction. "People who pursue intrinsic values - self-acceptance, making the world a better place, helping environmental protection - are much happier than people who chase popularity, money, and image," says Kasser. "If you orient your life around personal growth and family and community, you'll feel better."

Those of us who grew up in the 1970s may remember economist E.F. Schumacher's treatise *Small Is Beautiful,* which warned that taking up a lot of space and resources might not lead to happiness, but only to frustration and discontent. Schumacher tried to persuade us instead to buy into the notion of "enoughness," and strive to obtain the maximum amount of well-being while consuming only what we needed.

Indeed, researchers have discovered that many people bought big houses without any idea of what they'll actually do with the room, and ended up living in just a small portion of their costly domiciles.

In the quest to fill up the spaces with big-screen TVs, sectional sofas and bric-a-brac, many ended up succumbing to what one market researcher has termed "claustrophobia of abundance."

Schumacher says: "The first step is the hardest. You basically have to do a self-inventory and identify what you really need to be happy. And then you get rid of everything else. Then, when you move into a smaller space, it's not confining. It's liberating. You're not tied down by a big loan mortgage. It's easier to take care of your house and your things. And maybe you don't have to work as long and hard to pay the bills, so you have more time to enjoy life."

Influence

Remember, what we buy tends to be heavily influenced by "people we respect and want to be like, people whose sense of what's important in life seems close to our own." In other words, we are social creatures, and our spending habits reflect that.

Until late in the 20th century, this wasn't a big problem. Up to that point, we generally compared ourselves to our neighbours and peers - we aspired, as the saying goes, to "keep up with the Joneses." But by the 1990s, for various reasons, our vantage point had shifted. Instead of comparing ourselves to folks down the street, many of us eyed the lifestyles of movie stars and billionaires.

Not surprisingly, such turbo-charged yearnings fuelled massive discontent, a trend that is intensifying. Happily, there is a way back to reality. By making wise choices about our relationships, it's possible to painlessly shrink our desires while bolstering our bank accounts. Even when you don't want to ditch your friends or your living address, it's still possible to change your life in ways that help you spend less.

This is what behavioural economists call creating good "choice architecture" - environments that make it easier for us to act in our own best interests.

Advice

Think about how often we all regretfully say that we don't have the time to do "something". What we're actually saying is that whatever this "something" is, we aren't giving it top priority in our lives. Not enough time... or not a priority. There's a big difference there.

The first step is to find balance and meaning in your life, putting an end to the feeling that you just exist day after day. Then, you have to stop allowing the hours of your day to be filled by default with "busy-ness" that you don't control. Take some time to sort out what your real priorities are and to determine what is really important to you and also what is not. Try to eliminate or reduce the things you routinely do that bring you little or no satisfaction or joy, and reclaim that time for something more meaningful to you.

Once you know what your priorities and possibilities are, you can start taking control of your time and your life. It will be easier to stay on track if you start slowly and make only one small change at a time.

Keep your plans flexible and don't be afraid to make adjustments if something doesn't work out as well as you thought it would, or if your circumstances or priorities change. Some people have more money than other people, some people have more energy, talents, or abilities than other people... but everybody starts out with the same 24 hours in every day.

How we each choose to spend these hours defines who we are and the life we will live.