More People Choosing Voluntary Simplicity
Escaping the Rat Race
 HEALTH & LIVING HEADLINES
|
“This is for people who work too long in a job they hate, have a ton of debt, eat microwaved food and get sick a lot.”
— Janet Luhrs
 Author Janet Luhrs joined us for a live chat. Read the transcript here. |
| Web Links |
| PBS' Escape From Affluenza Simple Living Net The Simple Living Newsletter Yes! Magazine The Affluenza Project Duane Elgin's Voluntary Simplicity Site |
 Author Cecile Andrews gets a kiss from her dog Maggie in her garden in Seattle, Wash. (Annie Musselman/ABCNEWS) |
ABCNEWS.com
S E A T T L E, June 30
In 1989, Cecile Andrews offered a class in Seattle on voluntary simplicity. Four people registered. When she offered the same class again three years later, 175 people crammed into the classroom.
On the surface, voluntary simplicity seems, well…simple: People decide to simplify their lives in order to spend more time doing what they like to do, playing with the kids, enjoying a hobby, etc.
But voluntary simplicity has struck a nerve. Across the nation, people are buying books, subscribing to newsletters and taking courses to learn more about it. For now, most followers are yuppies who live in urban and suburban settings. But The Trends Research Institute, a think-tank of educators and specialists that predict social trends, estimates that by the end of the decade, 15 percent of American adults will be living the “simple life.”
Escape Becomes a Calling
For Andrews, voluntary simplicity was a way to escape the maelstrom of her life and spend more time with her family. Soon, it became her calling.
She quit her full-time job as an administrator at a local community college to devote herself to spreading the word. In 1997, she published the book, The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life.
The core message of the book and the voluntary simplicity movement is to cut consumption through educated buying, community-based bartering, time management and volunteering.
Andrews acknowledges that although quitting your job is not a requirement, families struggling to put food on the table are probably not the best candidates for voluntary simplicity.
“This is not so much for people who are worried about money,” she says. “It’s for people who are worried about their quality of life.”
Forget the Joneses
“Voluntary simplicity is about balance and about being free to do what you want to do instead of being stuck on the treadmill of life,” she says. “You can’t have debt and be free.”
|
|
Simplifying isn’t as easy as cutting up your credit cards, however. It’s about educated buying, or buying with your conscience.
That can be as simple as asking yourself if you truly need whatever it is you’re about to buy. If you do, try getting it at a local store or at a “social justice store” which donates part of the proceeds to charity.
“Telling people to stop buying isn’t right, isn’t enough and sounds self-rightous and dull,” Andrews says. “People need good food and beauty and fun and a sense of meaning, and when they have that, they naturally cut back on consumption.”
Rely on the Community
Voluntary simplicity pioneer Duane Elgin says community is essential to living the simple life. It’s there that you share your skills, your possessions and even your personal experiences.
“Calling this a movement isn’t quite correct because it’s more like a bunch of small movements on a local level,” says Elgin, the author of Voluntary Simplicity. “Simplicity makes sense in the context of community, because what one family can’t afford, maybe 12 can.”
Elgin advocates the barter system within those communities, and he even believes communities should develop their own form of money.
| Janet Luhrs' Secrets to Happiness: |
| Live beneath your means and within your seams. |
| Learn from the past, plan for the future, live in the present. |
| Skip two meals a day and give the money to the homeless. |
| Donate blood. |
| Don't criticize anyone for 24 hours and see how you feel. |
| Let someone cut ahead of you in line. |
| Take a 30 minute walk in your neighborhood every day. |
| Listen more. Talk less. |
| Be kind. Be even kinder to unkind people. |
| Understand and accept that life isn't always fair. |
To foster that community environment, Andrews recommends joining—or starting your own—simplicity circle, similar to a book group. It is in these simplicity circles that members can address their problems and find a simple way to solve them.
Sharing Your Story
“Most people need some sort of structured way to talk about the things that matter to them,” she says. “They need help getting to the next level in life.”
So, for example, if the topic of discussion is illiteracy, one group member might decide to forego watching TV one evening a week in order to volunteer at the local library or tutor kids after school. Or if members are having trouble choosing how to best spend their time, the group might help them prioritize.
The point of the time-management, say the authors, is to rid yourself of things which cause you to do everything on autopilot, so that you can concentrate fully on fewer things. Andrews, for example, quit all but a select few of the boards she held a seat on, because many of them were nothing more than a way to “get ahead.”.
And the authors recommend volunteering because it draws us from isolation back into a community—and as a result keeps us from spending that time consuming, says Andrews.
Elgin credits the mainstream press for the popularity of voluntary simplicity nationwide. However, he acknowledges that the movement has caught on more quickly and with people who are better educated and live in relatively large, West Coast cities.
“These are the people most isolated from the community, and who see that simplicity does not necessarily link to frugality and therefore to poverty,” he says. “Simplicity has to do with purpose—once we know our purpose in life, then we can organize accordingly.”
