How Simple is Simple?

This weekend I got my chops busted on Facebook for the following phrase:  "So often, simple is the very best answer.  Simple."

I had no great agenda behind my statement - it was actually prompted by the joy of a quiet Friday night, instead of the hectic one I'd had planned.

But a friend chose to see this as a political statement - or at least to respond to it that way.  He posted a link that suggested that choosing to live simply implies a willful ignorance of the inequities and injustices of the world.   (The actual specific politics of the link he posted can be tracked down on my Facebook page if you're really interested.  But that tangent is beside the point.)

Here's the thing.  The conscious pursuit of simplicity in one's life has nothing at all to do with ignoring all that is seriously screwed up in the world.

On the contrary.  The pursuit of simplicity - living with intentionality, with a focused discipline on reducing distractions - is surely the only way we can consider the situation of those less fortunate with any meaning, any consequence.

By choosing to live simply, I choose not to purchase, acquire, and consume in the manner that my culture seems to think I should.  By choosing to live simply I spend less time focused on the lifestyles of those who contribute [not much] to society and spend more time focused on the lives of those who bring Quality to mine.

I don't mean to preach.  I didn't mean to preach when I posted the simple statement on Facebook.  But neither do I like to be misunderstood on a matter that is a core belief.

Intentionality. Conscious existence.  Stillness.  These are the things that allow me to live meaningfully.

Simply.

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This little rant was written for Stream of Consciousness Sunday, which I stream-of-consciousnessed about last week. 

Everything Good Between Men and Women

"...has been written in mud and butter and barbeque sauce."

This was the beginning of the poem my husband gave me on Valentines Day.

You might be sick of Valentines by now.  The holiday, full of its chocolatey, stuffed-bear and balloon cynicism draws to a close tonight, and I have a dispeptic belly-full of cheap jewelry ads and schmaltzy marriage proposal stories. 

But the mystic in me finds it hard to hate a day that remembers how central love is to our existence.  Remembers that all the world for love may die. [Ben Jonson] Love, in all of its iterations, is reason to exist.  Ok - a bright pink stuffed bear has not nearly enough gravitas to make it real.  I'd submit that a half-pound of dark chocolate sea salt caramels just might. 

But love is real.  Realer than anything else that drives us.  Here is what I know, today, about love:

Love is the husband who calls his wife driving home from the city in the middle of the night, just to keep her awake over the miles.

Love is the husband who jumps up later that night to get a bowl for a feverish wife who feels like she's about to hurl.

Love is the husband who makes the kids heart-shaped waffles on Valentine's morning and lets his wife sleep until 8.10 when he absolutely-has-to-really-must-leave.

Love is the husband who posts a poem that he knows will break his wife's heart in a million (mostly good) ways as a gift, right out there for all of Facebook to see.

Love is the husband who leaves work after a quiet, miserable call from his sick wife.  Leaves work, arrives home with laptop in hand and plops himself on the floor to build a marble maze with three cabin-feverish kids.

It wasn't your standard Valentine celebration at the Yellow House this year.  But oh, it was filled with love!  The kind of love that makes days, weeks and months into rich and full lives.  Not happy perfect filled-with-glitter-and-champagne-and-swanky-dates lives, but lives filled with Quality.

Surely we can't hate a holiday that celebrates that.

It Feeds Me

The phrase was uttered quietly, that Thursday morning, without flourish. I am here, a fellow student told our class, because this is what feeds me.

That simple sentence has resonated all week. I am here because it feeds me.

The question started niggling around in my head as I ran, as I sorted laundry, as I spent an hour online. What feeds me?

I thought about McDonalds. I thought about how you can order an entire family's worth of food, have the crowd swarm around the table, stuffing french fries and picking breading off chicken nuggets and dripping Special Sauce from their chins and at the end of the meal feel ... unfed. I may feel bloated, greasy-fingered, maybe even full, but without fail, when I leave a table at a fast food restaurant I feel unfed.

Conversely, cooking does feed me. The act of sourcing ingredients, of methodically chopping the vegetables, of remembering that thyme tastes better in this soup than basil, of simmering beans and tomatoes and garlic and onions in a cast iron pot all day: this is feeding myself. The warmth of soup in my throat, the melting parmesan on top, the crusty bread to dip in, the appreciative humming of my companions: this is feeding my people.

Writing feeds me.

Cleaning does not.

My Thursday morning class feeds me.

Filing papers does not.

Teaching feeds me.

Running feeds me.

Sit-ups do not.

Connecting - genuinely connecting with people - it absolutely feeds me.

Funny: once I started asking the question, the answers came thick and fast. This feeds me, that does not. This feeds me, that........ meh.

Saturday morning dawned a beautiful autumn-y gold. There was so much on the schedule: tight timeframes, a lot of shuttling back & forth, parents juggling duties to fit it all in. I finally rolled up to the sidelines of the soccer pitch, coffee in hand, thinking This day won't feed me. It won't feed any of us. I said as much to Torbjorn.

So we ditched the day's agenda.

I made our apologies for unmet commitments, and we took off for the country, for a day in the fall sunshine. There was some time spent on our backs in a Virginia meadow watching clouds, there was some spiced cider and kettle corn, there was art and music and... simple. And there was soup at the end of the day.



Is it so much to ask, that your occupations will feed you? I'd argue that no, it isn't much to ask of your life, that you pursue those things that will make you full, sated, content. And yet easy, so easy, to navigate your days, mindlessly ordering the spiritual equivalent of Happy Meals, constantly 'consuming', and never ever feeling fed.

So let's do a little experiment, shall we? How 'bout you go through your day today and ask yourself what feeds you - ask if what you're doing feeds you, or if might be filling your life with psychic Big Macs.

I'd love to hear what feeds you.

Front Porch

It was the end of a long stupid week.  Not tragic, not incredibly stressful, just lots of silly mistakes and parenting mis-steps.  

The kids went to bed hot and grumpy, despite the gift of a weekend visit from their beloved Farmor, and I was so happy to shut the door on their bedroom and whisper Good night Nilsen kids, I love you. (and then whisper under my breath so much more than I showed you this week.)

The week had ended with more of a whimper than a bang - we missed our usual rowdy Friday night happy hour with neighbors, and both of us were feeling out of sorts. 

Then, out on our porch, we heard footsteps, and the front door cracking open.  Friends, unsure of the end of bedtime but certain of an unlocked door, were stopping by to end the week with us.  They'd shipped their kids off to grandparents, and at 9pm all four of us were ready to imagine a life of finished sentences, fresh new ideas, and sleeping in.  (I did say 'imagine.')

We poured some gin, splashed some tonic, and went back out the door to the front porch, and an almost-hot night.  In the dim light of a spring evening the peeling paint wasn't obvious, the flickering lanterns we lit added a vague charm, and for the briefest of moments, the four of us sat quietly listening to the spring peepers. 

Then we talked - late into the night - about plot lines for Larry David, bike lanes in our town, public school shenanigans, why rich people have handlers (do the handlers floss for the "handled"??) and other pipe dreams, large and small.  We dabbled a little in public policy, we reminisced a little about past triumphs.  

The gin was refreshed, the tumblers sweated, and still we talked. Rocked in the big white rockers on the front porch, and let the ideas pour out of our mouths as if Monday was at least a month away.

It wasn't the sort of night that will change a person's life.  But it was exactly the sort of evening that reminds you that life can be measured in the small moments - the moments celebrated with beat-up tumblers of gin, rockers coated with the pollen of 98 trees, and friends who will find the same contentment in a warm evening, cold drinks, and a few mismatched lanterns. 

We set our worlds to right, on Friday night, and honestly? It really didn't take much.

Front Porch Dreaming, Spring '09