Examining the Simple Life

It came to me recently that a simple life is the absence of decisions.  The post modern, Internet-fueled world is one that is characterized by constant, minute-to-minute decisions about everything from what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and everything, if anything, in between) to how to raise our children and how to live.  The fracturing of culture into a million pieces of individual tastes mean that there is no longer a more or less universal Way of Doing; therefore, everything in life is up for grabs.  

While there are undeniable advantages to post modern life, there is a cost to all the "freedom" we enjoy.  One of those costs is the mental overload associated with constant evaluation and choice-making.  It is exhausting, all these decisions.  This is why resort-type vacations are so relaxing and restorative; most of the mundane daily decisions are made for you by the resort, relieving the mind of its daily burden.

The life of the monastery is one in which decision-making is largely removed from daily life.  The monastic still has free will, but has chosen to subvert that free will for the greater good of the community, but also for the greater good of his or her soul.  The rhythm of the monastery is one that is defined by the cycle of church services, the liturgical year, and individual daily activities and obediences are assigned by the abbot of the monastery according to ability and talent.  The fasting cycle is relatively easy to keep because everyone is keeping the fast according to his or her abilities, and there isn't much in the way of alternatives available. It isn't a rigid sort of life, but it is a disciplined sort of life.  

Discipline sometimes takes the form of deliberately making fewer choices.

I think one of the things that draws people to Wendell Barry-style agrarianism is that there is a simple rhythm to life in the country--animals must be fed and watered (and milked) on a fairly consistent schedule, crops planted and harvested according to the season, tasks done in good order according to the external rhythm of the farm, and all within the context of a rooted surrounding community.

It is difficult to impose that sort of order and rhythm on one's own life, as a singular person or family unit, especially in a Western urban setting, as I'm fast coming to realize.  In part this is because the city runs to a much more chaotic drumbeat, and there is much in daily life that works outside one's control.  Buses don't run on schedule (or run at all sometimes), city services are erratic, shops are open and closed at all times of the day, nothing runs according to natural order.  Mostly, though, it is because in order to remove decisions from every moment of every day, the order must be imposed externally, but some other source.  In a monastery, it is tradition and the abbot who impose order; on a farm, the natural cycle of sun and dark, the change of seasons, and the animals and crops impose the order.

So what is to be done?  I'm still pondering that.  I'm taking some time right now, examining the points of stress in our lives, and trying to figure out where a decision can be taken out of the equation.  Piglet is going to 1st grade in the fall, and the school requires uniforms, which makes my life much easier in the kid clothing department going forward.  The younger kids have a few more years before they will need them, but it helps me to know that at least one area where I make a lot of decisions about what to buy, how much to buy, and what they will wear will be simplified in time.  I'm trying to stick to a relatively small number of recipes that I rotate through for my meals, which is another area where I feel like I make a lot of minute-to-minute and day-to-day decisions.  The boys' lunches are basically down to two options, and the girls pretty much eat the same thing every day.  I don't mind eating the same thing for breakfasts and lunches either, so I'm tending to rotate between three options to make sure that I a) eat real food at both meals, and b) eat both meals in a timely manner.  The number of toys the kids have is fairly manageable, and I've severely restricted the amount of toys we keep in the living room where the kids primarily play, because Birdie is in a serious fill-and-spill stage of play, and the boys are terrible about cleaning up after themselves.  Less stuff=less stuff to clean up=fewer decisions about storage and where things need to go.  I think they are able to better play with what is there when there is less of it too.

I think it is also important to separate a simple aesthetic from a simple way of life.  The former is an interior design feature, the latter a conscious choice to reduce the amount of stress, chaos, and decisions in one's life.  It is true that less stuff generally means a simpler life, and often the aesthetic either flows from the choice, or precedes the choice.  It is also true, however, that some people have simple lives and have more than the bare minimum of stuff in their houses and lives.  So it can go both ways.  

Stuff has a way of being visually overwhelming, however, and tends to create decisions about storage, clean up, and so forth.  Even digital "stuff" can be overwhelming if there is too much of it.  I try to keep the desktop uncluttered, files stored according to type, and regularly get rid of things I don't need any more, but my husband isn't as great about keeping his own digital things cleaned up, so there's that.  At the same time, I do find myself evaluating our stuff constantly, and I think that process creates a bit of stress for me, so I'm trying to let it go, and do stuff-evaluation on a more quarterly or bi-annual basis, rather than all the time.  I also recognize that stuff-evaluation is a stress response in myself, so I'm also trying to find different ways to cope (that don't involve food).  We've made some modifications to our bedtime routines for the kids to not only streamline the process, but also to remove some of the chaos of family prayers and the number of transitions that have to happen in such a short amount of time.  It's not working perfectly, but it is better than before.  I'm trying to spend my afternoons reading or doing non-computer related tasks, so as to reduce the number of technology-related decisions in my day, and that also seems to help.

I'm sure this is a task that will continue, but as I'm trying to lay off the decision-making, and reduce my choices, I'm also trying to spend less time analyzing it, and more time just moving through my days.