Labelling Minimalism, Voluntary Simplicity, Simple Living and Frugal Lifestyles

The most significant problem with labels such as minimalist, living simply, voluntary simplicity or frugal living is that the categorizing itself is purely subjective.  A minimalist may eschew all possessions, or focus on a few premium pieces.  Voluntary simplicity suggests that one can acquire anything he wants, but opts for a Spartan existence. Frugal lifestyles seem to imply that the subject lives “on the cheap” with everything.  Living simply, too, evokes images of backwoods, back-to-the-earth survivalism.  Yet, each may describe the same lifestyle.  Rather than attempting to label, it is easier to visualize the concept of selective possession, and view true minimalism as a way of filtering out the excesses.

I, for example, own few material possessions, live in a yurt and often harvest wild plants.  Yet, far from being bereft of money or liquid assets, we own a newer Prius, holiday three or four times each year in exotic or far-flung locales and live a life free of worry about finances.  Our choices are the envy of many friends, yet are options available to anyone who wishes to prioritize his life similarly to us.  We do not measure ourselves by what we own, but how we live.  We own few tangibles, yet also own a library of memories and pleasurable moments.

How many of us, though, are mentally and financially prepared to make the sacrifices that allow us to make choices focused on voluntary simplicity?  A simple test will reveal our capacity to not only adapt, but to embrace this alternative way of living.  Oddly, the first time I tested myself using this simple strategy, I felt significant stress and anxiety – a little like being lost, alone and in a strange country.

 Choose a mid-week day for your trial. Leave home without your cash, credit or debit cards, and no means to access them.  If you take the bus or subway to work, carry the tokens essential for a trip to and from work, nothing more.  No coffee money, no gift cards for restaurants and so on.  If possible, leave your cell phone at home, and, under no circumstance use it to access a friend’s support or make purchases.  Sounds simple, right?  Almost certainly, the minute you are isolated from any means of funds to make spontaneous purchases, you will begin to go through a withdrawal, regardless how minor.  Yet, do we really need that morning latte, the afternoon drink, the chance to make an impulse buy?  A mere day of deprivation will reveal just how essential these comfort buys are to you, and whether you are emotionally ready to embrace a minimalistic lifestyle wholeheartedly.

That one day was tough?  Now set yourself up for three days, or a week. 

My first test, predictably, found me longing for my daily coffee fix, and wondering what I would do if a crisis occurred.  The fact that no such dilemma had confronted me for months (or perhaps years) prior was not material.  The “what ifs” drove my thinking for much of that day.  However, at the end of the day, I discovered that I was not embracing my return to materialism, but was, instead, exhilarated by my newly found freedom.  I have always been a spendthrift or a tightwad, depending upon the moment and the mood.  For years, I carried upwards of four to six thousand dollars cash in my pockets, and my low-limit credit card as backup.  Now, I carry no credit cards, no debit cards, and rarely have more than fifty cents in my pocket.  Do I long for the days of superfluous cash?  Hardly. 

The measure of whether you, too, are suited to involve yourself in a life of voluntary simplicity  really is whether you fear the lack of possessions or love the thrill of attempting to discard all of the excess you own.  In order to adopt this new way of viewing your possessions, you need to adopt a new way of viewing your life.  Is your life defined by the moments of pleasure you get from all of life, or is it defined by the status you feel that you acquire by owning and displaying material items?  Each of us finds our oasis of enjoyment in life uniquely, and the owner of a $450,000 sports car or a $3,000,000 painting is no less entitled to enjoy life his way as you are to choose a more focused yet Spartan way of living.  The labels attached to materialism or minimalism do not define you or your priorities.  You define, by the route you choose.  A minimalist simply chooses to cozy up to fewer possessions, and more moments.  Yet, even each minimalist is uniquely different from the next, regardless of the label attached.

Give Life A Hug. It's Free and Fulfilling!

Minimalism: emptiness, austerity, meaninglessness, plainness.  Minimizing is the act of reducing or eliminating.  So, it is reasonable to interpret that minimalism is the equivalent of bland.  Wrong!  A life of voluntary simplicity can offer much more than nothing!  Indeed, by eliminating the emotional, physical and psychological clutter in our lives, we free up space for more of life itself.

It is the route of someone who has given up on life that is the path of emptiness and meaninglessness.  A true minimalist does not give up on life: he embraces it.

I currently work on a project that helps those who otherwise could not afford it to buy their own homes, and to live with a measure of dignity even while living in poverty.  Ironically, living in poverty and austerity seems to be how many people view minimalism.  My project does not require me to own, but it does require me to give.  I give of my energy and knowledge, yet it does not deplete me in any way.  That is the essence of the cliché about “giving a smile.”  The more you give, the more you have.

In prior articles, I described how minimalism is like being an art gallery director.  By clearing away the junk and debris, and featuring a sculpture or painting, isolated on a pedestal or wall, you actually draw attention to and enhance the pleasure of that work of creativity.  Similarly, when one gives up the junk in his or her life, more room is created for more valuable pursuits.

I have found that, when I cleanse my body through short-term dieting, I find sources of energy inside of which I doubted the existence.  In the same manner, when I began the process of cleansing my accumulation of worthless stuff, my involvement with this frivolous fluff decreased concurrently.  That meant more free time to enjoy the activities that I liked.  But dieters who deprive themselves of eating, or who gorge on exercise, have replaced one weakness with another, and neither offers the intrinsic pleasure that a life of casual, regular and responsible living and eating provides.

The great benefit, for me, of a life of voluntary simplicity is that I have become more enthused about other pursuits. Those pursuits, such as charitable ventures, are the ones that drive me. However, you may find more time for family, or participating in events, in learning, and so on.  By owning less, you receive more.

But, with less baggage, you also are free to enthusiastically embrace life, and become enthusiastic about the world around you.  Do not sit back, and waste the freedom you receive by carrying less material, less responsibility and more stress.  Grab the world, and give it a figurative hug!  Enthusiasm and excitement are not “things.”  While they are simple, both are free, take up no space and yet will fill the newly discovered free spaces in your life.

Newton Was Wrong: (Human) Bodies Do Not Tend To Stay At Rest!

Newton postulated that a body at rest will tend to stay at rest.  Witticisms aside, that principle clearly does not apply to human beings.  Rest is merely a reprieve from living. Those of us that seek to stay at rest are not seeking that oasis in life that allows us to feel fulfilled and satisfied, but are seeking to avoid the challenges that interaction with the world demands.  Yet, many of us describe our idyllic oasis in terms of doing nothing!

In my articles on finding your oasis in life, I have focused, to date, on self-realization.  Self realization principally enables us to recognize who we are, what we want and how we relate to the world around us.  It is self-actualization – the endeavour to become the best we can be – that provides the fulfilment necessary to being comfortable with ourselves and our lives.

In the early 1900s, Abraham Maslow proposed his hierarchy of needs.  This schematic implied that the most basic needs must be met before we could hope to climb the eight-rung ladder to self-actualization.  More recently, psychologist Steven Reiss suggested that there are sixteen basic desires that all of us seek to satisfy.  Psychologist Clayton Alderfer revised the Maslow model, and formulated his Existence, Relatedness and Growth theory.  He subsequently added in a regression component, saying that, when higher needs such as self-actualization and self-esteem needs are not met, we redouble our efforts to achieve lower-level needs.

These theories all imply that humans have needs that are ongoing, and that we, internally and externally, seek to have those needs satisfied.  We all, therefore, are seeking that oasis where we can regroup and renew our attempts to reach self-actualization.

Ironically, as we near the self-actualization level, our concerns begin to focus more on our role in the world around us, and our perceived needs begin to give way to the needs of others.  Social responsibility becomes one of those integral elements in self-fulfilment.

Many people, altruistically, place others well ahead of themselves.  My mother, for instance, would sit up into the wee hours of the morning from September to December, making presents for children who needed to have a Christmas gift.  She ached to provide for “those people who are less fortunate.”  However, she failed to consider herself to be one of those less fortunate, even though our household income never exceeded $3,000 in a year, our 450-square foot home sheltered six family members, one of the rooms in the house had no floor, and she was dying of cancer.  Others came first, for her.  Most of the year, she lived an embittered existence, but, as Christmas approached, she found her oasis.

As I was preparing this article on motivation and self-development, I took time to view a documentary on Harry Belafonte.  I was in the midst of writing about achieving self-satisfaction.  But the documentary changed that focus, dramatically.

In one scene, a starving child lay passively, as flies crawled over his gaping, listless eyes.  And I was thinking of how we should seek out tranquillity?

In another clip, Belafonte and Martin Luther King struggle to make the Kennedys understand how unjust the treatment of blacks in America was at that time.  And I was considering ways to escape from the world around us, to alleviate the angst and stress?

Neither Belafonte or King reached the point where they could say that they were satisfied.  King never saw the progress that he stimulated.  Belafonte has never been satisfied to say that he has done enough.  Yet, each reached a point in their lives that very few of us ever even strive to reach.

Finding your oasis, consequently, should not be about finding a level where one can be at perpetual rest.  It is not human nature.  Finding your oasis must be as much about enduring the travails of the desert, so that one can pause, look around for a few moments and say, “I’m ready to continue my journey of being a better person.”  Without satisfying those higher-level human needs, we are doomed to continually attempt to slake our human thirst to be better by turning to our more base, self-serving needs.  That, in turn, makes us no better than the animals around us.  Our oasis can only be found when our focus is on being a better person, and a better part of humanity.

Your Bad Day Rarely More Than 5% Bad!

www.robertflee.com
So you think you’re having a bad day?  Perhaps, the worst in your life!  Hyperbole aside, bad days rarely are truly bad.

Think of your morning commute.  A fifteen-minute delay in traffic.  Perhaps a rude driver cuts you off.  10 seconds, at most. That’s a mere 910 seconds out of a day of 86,400 seconds. The “bad day” has consumed no more than 1% of your day.  However, the delay puts you in a foul mood for the entire forty-minute drive, and the first half-hour of your workday. In turn, you snap at a couple of coworkers, and may make a mistake or two because of your elevated stress levels.  This consumes another ten minutes to correct. You’ve added eighty minutes of “bad” to your bad day!  Not only that, you’ve helped to ruin a few moments of your coworkers’ days; perhaps even more than that.  One percent has become 6.6%, very quickly. 

Still, if your “bad day” has no more than six or seven percent negative in it, that’s far from disastrous.  93% is still okay to great, if you adjust to the circumstances.  Unfortunately, many of us let the bad moments fester, and our day goes downhill.  It is all a matter of attitude, and yours is leading to unpleasant experiences.

In 1986 (June 6, to be precise), I had a relatively bad day, that started at about 10pm.  At that time, I was heading to my house with my children.  When I arrived, I found the door locked.  A moment of stupidity followed, where I pounded on the leaded glass window of the front door.  Hard.  Very hard.  It broke.

My arm went through the glass, and then the glass went through my arm, with a sharp spear about six inches long in the bottom of the frame slicing into my forearm, precisely at the wrong point.  My instant, reflexive reaction was to pull back.  That raked the flesh, muscle, tendons, nerves, artery and vein back toward my wrist for a distance of about five inches, into a messy pile.  Blood spurted like a wildcat oil well.  My hand flopped wildly back and forward as I flinched.  That was bad.  Less than three seconds, and, including the angry moment, less than thirty.  Out of 86,400.

Now that bad day had potential to get a lot worse, with the vast amount of blood I was losing.

I rushed into the house, to my dresser (or, more precisely, to the last drawer in the dresser that did not contain my wife’s clothes.  Ripping open the drawer, I grabbed one of my cotton tee shirts to use as a tourniquet, wrapping it tightly around my forearm, and slowing the flow.

I thought it was my tee shirt.  My wife, unknown to me, had commandeered my last drawer, and I had used one of her white tops.  I heard about it from her.

This still had potential to be horribly bad.  I needed to get to the hospital, quickly.  And my wife was screaming at me for ruining her $15 top!  That was when the fun started, as I saw it.  It even seemed grotesquely funny at that moment!

My wife had been home, but was disinclined to unlock the door for me.  The good luck was that she was in the company of a friend, who saw the urgency, quickly got me back into my car and drove me toward the hospital.  On the way, we intercepted a police car, heading for, of all places, a snack shop.

Local police generally are not supposed to transport emergency victims to the hospital.  They are to stabilize the patient, while summoning the ambulance.  I was not going to wait.  I was able to get out of my car, and made my way to the cruiser, opening the rear door myself.  The police re-entered the car and looked at me.  Didn’t put the car in drive, didn’t look to help this profusely bleeding individual.  Just looked at me, one by turning around, the other in the rear view mirror.  I knew my colour was pale.  But when I fell against the side of the door in weakness, the male cop turned more white that I could ever have been.

“Drive, drive, drive,” he screamed at the female cruiser pilot.  She drove.  That, too, was funny.

Within eight minutes, we were at the hospital emergency entrance.  However, neither cop seemed to have the strength or will to get out of the vehicle and assist me.  Both, now, turned to stare, terrified, at me.  I was trapped in the rear, bleeding to death.  I could feel the air conditioning start at my feet and well up my legs.  I could not release my grip on my left forearm, largely because I could no longer feel my hands.  The top of my head felt air-conditioned.  I knew what was happening, and, somehow at that moment, the absurdity of the situation was not particularly funny.  It was, in retrospect, but not at the moment. 

My good luck was that the cops had forewarned the hospital that I was arriving.  An orderly was waiting at the entrance, and, after a minute, stepped forward to let me out of the car.  The cops sat there, and as I looked back at them, they were staring in revulsion at the bloody mess that I had left behind on the rear seat.  I found that slightly amusing.

As I was wheeled to the intake desk of this newly renovated emergency area, I took note of the bright carpet in the area.  So did the intake nurse.  She gasped, when she noticed the blood that I was dripping onto the carpet, and quickly wheeled me onto a linoleum-covered area.  That, I confess, was morbidly funny, and I pondered why any sane  administrator would put down carpet in an emergency entrance.

The rest of the night was a mix of bizarre, tedium and graveside comedy.  The only doctor-in-residence on shift that night came in an hour after I had been wheeled into a quiet area, a compression bandage applied, and painkiller offered.  I had declined, because I absolutely was terrified of needles.  The doctor entered, lifted the compression bandage briefly, shuddered, uttered “ugh,” and left.  I never saw him again!  That was both absurd and somewhat frightening. Ten hours later, at 8 am, my plastic surgeon arrived to begin the reconstruction.  He was introduced as Dr. Robert Grafton.  What a marvellous name for a reconstructive surgeon!

Nine hours later, I saw him again, as I emerged from the anaesthesia.

“What kind of job did you do?” I asked him.

“Not as good as you,” he replied.  It was intended as humour, and I laughed.

The next day, I met my roommate, who had been asleep when I had usurped his territory on the ward the previous late afternoon.  He was a marvellous character, who had had his left elbow shattered by a baseball bat when he went to the assistance of a young man who was being beaten by several attackers.  From his left ear to the tips of his left fingers, he was a beautiful, translucent purple, with the skin so swollen that it looked like the balloon that was his arm would pop any second.  He spent a great deal of time on Demerol.  Anyone who calls the centre of nerves at the back of the elbow a “funny bone” should discuss that choice of words with my roommate at the hospital.  I felt pain just looking at the injury!

That was Sunday morning.  The entire weekend had been a Monty Python marathon on television.  We both, it turned out, loved Monty Python, and we both devoured episode after episode all day, well into early morning.  Neither of us bothered with any painkillers, from early Sunday afternoon, until the next morning.  We laughed so hard, so long, so loud that the nurses frequently came into the room to threaten to evict us from the hospital. It was not that other patients were being disturbed, as our door was shut.  It was merely that the staff wanted to be part of the experience of these two patients, supposedly in extreme pain, enjoying the night so fully and vivaciously.  That day was one of the best that I had had in years, throughout my crumbling marriage.

I learned from that accident that I can do a great deal with only one hand, and practised for months at improving those skills.  Prior to the accident, I loathed sales.  Because I could not return to my old occupation for many months, I took training in sales, and became a very successful salesperson. 

I found, most of all, that bad days – even as supposedly terrible as June 6, 1986 – most often are not bad.  I had less that 2% of my day that could be categorized as “bad.”  I saw a lot of unique situations, and even enjoyed a lot of laughs along the way.

The day would have been bad, if I had not reacted to staunch the negative flow.  By interacting with positive experiences, my bad day became a great one (albeit mightily inconvenient), and I grew, as a person, as a result of what was supposed to be a bad moment.

Before you let that jerk who cut you off ruin your day, and the days of those around you, think.  How many seconds really have been ruined?  Then get on with enjoying the rest of your day, even with its few not-so-great moments.  Have a great day!

Finding Your Oasis: Turning Life Into Luxury

We all seek a safe, pleasurable life, or moment in life.  We all seek an oasis of comfort, safety and well-being.  Finding our own oasis is a quest, and it is a quest that is individual.

This article, on finding your own oasis, is really about you, so to confuse things, and to appear completely narcissistic, I want to start by talking about me.  About what I regard as being important.  About what my dreams are.  About my beliefs.  About the things I do.  And, most significantly, about to whom I relate and love.

Actually, I intend to do very little of what I have just claimed.  Quite simply, I approach life with a maximum focus on living it, and a minimal focus on owning it.  I rent life.  And my supplier makes no promises to me!  That is the basis on which I operate.  Do, feel and live it now!  That is, be and do the best you can be, today.

What each of us deems to be “the best” is extremely subjective.  However, there are a few very definite principles that should guide our direction.  I would like, in this introductory article on “finding your oasis,” to elaborate on those concepts, and help you to discover that idyllic spot – figurative or literal – in this world that is meant just for you.  This quintet of canons are: 1) Know what is important to you.  We evolve throughout our life, so what is important may change periodically.   2) Have a dream.  Better yet, have dreams! 3) Believe in something, energetically.  Stand up for your beliefs, too.  4) Live life, and do so with commitment. 5) Love life, and the things in it.  Even love that which you hate.

I began by threatening to talk about me. I find that difficult, since I have been indoctrinated with the belief that I should always place others first, and that modesty requires that I not talk about myself.  It is a belief that I have analysed, and found that, even though it was impregnated in me as a child, by my parents, it still remains true.  That is the beauty of adulthood.  I can choose to embrace or reject those tenets and moral imperatives that others hold to be absolute.  I can make the choice as to what principles will guide my actions and thoughts.  It is choice , in itself, that impacts on our drive to seek a sanctum or haven from the rest of the world.

According to psychologist, Dr. Richard Lazarus, "Stress resides neither in the situation nor in the person.  It depends on a transaction between the two."  Yet, one of the primary reasons that people cite as to why they may want to escape from a situation, a circle of influence, a way of life or a job is that they are stressed.  And, combining a lack of control over our stressful situation with a lack of tools to deal effectively with stress seems to heighten that need to seek relief from the stressor.  Occupational psychologist, Cary Cooper, suggests that even the new technologies that should have been relief mechanisms for stress are contributing to greater stress on individuals.

So, since stress seems to play the pivotal role in our need to “find our oasis,” many of my future articles will examine ways to deal with that stress.

Much of the lives of many of us is spent doing things that we loathe, or, at least, would prefer to not be doing.  The majority of us, for example, count the seconds until the end of the workday, because we are labouring at a task that we do not enjoy.  We either have to “suck it up” and endure, leave the job, or discover ways to turn the tasks into fun.  That is the essence of one scene in the Mary Poppins musical.  We should, regardless of our job or circumstance, be seeking out those things that are important to us, and embracing them, while, at the same time, finding significance in what we do.

For some of us, ironically, the most important thing is money, and we are willing to endure unpleasant consequences in the pursuit of it.  My wife and I live a life of voluntary simplicity, living with the minimum of acquisitions.  In my blog on Lean and Green Living, I elaborate, though, on some of the stressors that such a lifestyle generates, even though the way of living is intended to reduce stress.  If money is that important, then you need to find ways to achieve the goal of acquisition, in order to find your own oasis.  However, a word of caution:  money, most often, is not the objective.  It is what that money signifies, so look deeper, to find the truly important things that you believe that money provides.

Hand in hand with discovering what is important to you is understanding and elaborating upon what your dreams may be.  Dreams are viewed as being distant goals, rather than immediate rewards.  In fact, dreams can be close at hand, or even instantaneous.  My dream is to share a way to live harmoniously, with every one of nature’s gifts, free of intolerance, and to live magnanimously.  While I have not reached that goal (and never will, since the goal constantly moves, and I frequently stumble), I have enriched my life by keeping that dream in focus.

The third tenet in finding our unique oasis is to believe in something, energetically.  I believe in the idea that, in everything I possess, ownership is transient.  Therefore, since I also believe that I am “my brother’s keeper,”  I should not waste or frivolously destroy what I have been given, and should, indeed, seek to improve what I possess before passing it on.  Tied with each of the other four canons of living, I spend much of my leisure time exploring energy and conservation concepts, in the hope that I can improve on what is available currently.  It may be vain, but it is satisfying.

How many of us live our lives with commitment?  How many of us passively watch our lives expire?  By doing little to rescue ourselves, we contribute to our stress and our feelings of being lost and helpless.  Stand up and be counted.  You may be standing up on the side opposite me, but that neither makes you right or wrong.  It makes you dedicated and enthusiastic about that which you choose to embrace, and that takes you a step closer to finding your oasis.

Lastly, we need to love life, and everything in it.  My severed finger, or my long-distant failed marriages, or my infrequent financial crises may not be pleasant, but they reveal to us that we are not observers of life: we are participants, and we should as eagerly endure these hurdles as we do those special, wonderful moments in life, that occur far more frequently than the bitter ones.

There is no one answer to how all of us achieve the goals and objectives outlined in our guide to finding our own oasis.  There are thousands of ideas and routes, as well as side trails and detours.  Nonetheless, when we set out on the journey toward our oasis in the desert, we will already have begun to find it.