De-Complicating Our Lives
Are you overwhelmed with the demands of life? Learn how to simplify.
When my wife, Sarah, got pregnant in 1995, I did what every red-blooded American male does when his wife is pregnant for the first time: I quit my job, sold our house and dragged Sarah and our unborn child from Kansas to Oregon so I could go to Bible college.
We arrived, nearly broke, to discover that the married student housing we’d been promised was still under construction, forcing us to put our things in storage and rent a tiny, dingy studio apartment. Moving in took about 10 minutes; all we had room for were some clothes, a few dishes, one chair, a futon and a clock radio on a nightstand, which we jokingly dubbed our entertainment center.
And as we stood there, surrounded by fewer possessions than either of us had had since birth, we made a startling discovery: Almost all those wildly popular books on “simplifying your life” are pure bunk.
My Calendar Runneth Over
Life is overwhelming these days, say the simplification gurus. We have too much work, too much entertainment, too many choices, too many voices, too little free time and no solitude.
Nonsense, say I. Life is hectic, to be sure. But that’s hardly a new phenomenon. Epicurus and Aristotle both complained that life had a nasty habit of overflowing one’s days and draining one’s soul, and they didn’t even have to deal with road rage, soccer practice or ATMs.
The simplification gurus also seem to assume we all, deep down, want to be Thoreau living on Walden Pond, with nothing to do all day but think deep thoughts.
More nonsense. Deep down, most of us aren’t deep at all; we in fact suspect Thoreau was crazy. When Sarah and I faced the prospect of three months in a coed monk’s cell with no diversions and no money, we did not — repeat not — say, “Praise God! Stripped of our normal distractions, we can at last devote as much time as we please to prayer, meditation and enlightening conversation!” And this wasn’t just because we were shallow Baby Boomers needing constant entertainment (although that was a larger factor than I cared to admit).
Like everyone, we complained about being overwhelmed. But like everyone else, we also wanted to be overwhelmed, or at least busy enough to stay distracted. The fact is, it’s terrifying to have nothing but one another, much less oneself, for company. And it’s no better for Christians: We know all too well that we’re sinners, and sometimes the last thing in the world we want to hear is that still, small voice.
Tipping the Balance
The problem, then, is neither new nor external. We hate being too busy; we fear being too quiet. Our circumstances, income, possessions and commitments are usually irrelevant. Few of us ever enjoy — or endure — real peace and quiet unless, like Sarah and I, we get forced into it.
Fearsome as it was, our solitude had its benefits. We learned to like being quiet together. We went to the library a lot, an addiction we still enjoy. We took lots of walks.
And we learned why the simplicity books, bunk though they may be, are so popular. Simplicity gurus, no matter what their methods, know what we want: We want to be proactive rather than reactive. We want to feel in control rather than under control. We want to produce more than we consume without being consumed ourselves. We want to feel that we’ve mastered life, not that life is masticating us. And tipping the balance in our favor, even a little, can make all the difference in the world.
Having been denied the complexity of life long enough to learn to enjoy its absence, Sarah and I managed to keep it from making a full comeback. Being a humor columnist hardly qualifies me to give the sort of career/life goal advice most simplicity gurus do, but I have learned a few tricks to keep my home from becoming Grand Central Station for the runaway freight train of life.
1. Nuke the Guilt
Most self-help books have the same subtext: “You’re not good enough. You’re fat, ugly, lazy, unmotivated, unsuccessful, poor, stupid, bald, a lousy parent or all of the above.” Add to that the annoying perfection of androids like Martha Stewart or Tony Robbins and it’s enough to give anyone the shrieking fantods.
God judges us by our relationships, though, not our house’s color palette, our wardrobe, our weight, our kids’ number of extracurricular activities or whether we can whip up a portabello scallop salad with braised shallots from our window garden.
Scenario 1: Mom gets up way too early Thanksgiving morning and grinds out an exhausting, elaborate feast, all the while yelling at the kids to stay out of the kitchen. Dad tries to simultaneously be helpful and stay out of the way. Finally, the whole family eats a strained dinner in uncomfortable clothes. Both parents glare, daring the kids not to be a living Norman Rockwell painting. This, they explain through clenched teeth, is a treasured family memory in the making, und zey vill enjoy it!
Scenario 2: Mom, Dad and the kids sleep in on Thanksgiving, throw a frozen pizza in the microwave for lunch, play touch football, take a long walk, watch a video and make s’mores in the fireplace before bed, leaving the sink full of dirty dishes.
Sarah and I have enjoyed family gatherings on both ends of this spectrum. If you enjoy cooking and all the pageantry of a state banquet, go for it. But don’t let anyone tell you Scenario 1 is inherently better than Scenario 2.
Maybe your kids snack on Fritos and Oreos instead of carrot sticks and figs. Maybe there’s seven pounds of dog hair under your couch. Maybe you e-mail all your friends and never write real letters anymore. So what? Sometimes strengthening your relationships takes relaxing your standards — at least some of the twisted, shallow standards the world pushes at us. Better a home that will never appear in House Beautiful than a family that would be at home in National Enquirer (Proverbs 17:1).
2. Kill Your Telephone
Telephones exist to serve us, not vice-versa — but lunging at a ringing phone, even if it’s interrupting dinner or a conversation, is a tough habit to break. Not answering the phone is considered as impolite as ignoring someone who’s speaking to you in person. Nevertheless, I won’t pay good money for a box on the wall to tell me what to do. If the phone rings at my house while we’re otherwise engaged, too bad. If I answer and it’s a sales call, I butt in, say, “Not interested,” and hang up.
I have a friend with better manners than I — but who is even more determined not to let his telephone run his life. His method is simple: He never, ever answers the phone. The ringer and answering machine sound are off permanently; he checks the machine once or twice a day. He’s the only person I know who never complains about telemarketers.
Your home is your family’s refuge, a sanctuary against unwanted intrusion (Proverbs 25:17). If you wouldn’t allow strangers or even friends to barge through your front door at all hours, why allow them to barge in through the phone? It’s amazing how much tranquility the phone’s absence can foster.
3. Read Books
Notice I didn’t just say “read.” In The Big Chill, Jeff Goldblum’s character, a journalist, complains that his editor’s cardinal rule is all articles must be short enough to finish in the bathroom. Goldblum was right: Most popular reading materials are mental junk food. We’ve all seen surveys on the world’s most influential books. Ever been asked about history’s most influential beauty columnist or movie reviewer?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with magazines, newspapers or Web sites, but reading a book requires more mental and physical quiet, not to mention a greater time commitment. Books have more ideas, larger worlds to explore, more staying power and no stinky perfume ads to fall out in your lap.
And unlike most parental duties, teaching kids to love books isn’t hard: Read with your kids at bedtime, keep lots of good books handy, and wait for the magic. All you need is a library card.
A few months ago, I realized my 6-year-old son, Sam, was suspiciously quiet. I found him in his room, absorbed in a book — and he stayed there for three hours. Who cares if it was a Simpsons comic book? He has the rest of his life to read Les Misérables or City of God, and he will someday, now that he’s hooked. My feet didn’t touch the ground for the rest of the day.
4. Create Something
Many simplicity gurus encourage us to shun modern conveniences. TV dinners, instant messaging and prepackaged everything, they complain, have leached the soul right out of living.
In my humble opinion, though, some of the basics aren’t worth getting back to. Sure, the 19th-century family didn’t have to worry about changing fuses, irradiated food, identity theft or computer viruses. They wouldn’t have had time to, what with all the fire kindling, candle pouring, soap making, flour grinding, butter churning, wood chopping, fabric weaving, horse currying and hundreds of other exhausting chores they had.
I once saw a 150-year-old recipe that started, “Butcher a hog and save the head. Saw open the skull lengthwise, then scoop out the brains with. . .”
No thanks. I’ll cheerfully accept the soullessness of my local modern grocery store.
There’s something to be said, though, for a tangible legacy. Many jobs in our information-driven economy produce nothing that isn’t invisible or abstract. A carpenter can see and touch his work; an actuary, broker or administrative assistant can’t.
Neither of us can build furniture, but over the years, Sarah and I have made our own preserves, vanilla, wrapping paper, bread, candles, pickles, Christmas cards and innumerable other edible or decorative items. Some are much better than anything available in a store; some are much worse. None has been cheaper or more convenient. Most make great gifts, but the real reason we do it is that nothing’s as satisfying as a home (or stomach) full of good things you’ve made with your own hands.
Our world makes it too easy to be lifeless entertainment sponges. Creating something — anything — lets us be more than mere consumers (Ephesians 4:28).
5. Have Guests — Lots of Guests
I said earlier that our homes should be sanctuaries against unwanted intrusion. Fort Knox, though, is not quite what I have in mind.
Advertisers, telemarketers, credit companies, e-mail spammers and the like work so hard to worm their way into our lives that they’re turning us all into hermits. Personal privacy is one of the biggest concerns on most people’s minds and has been for some time.
Opening your home to friends, then, is just that much more meaningful. Whenever Sarah and I start feeling stressed and overwhelmed by life, we invite someone over for dinner as soon as possible. Is it disruptive? Yes. Is it hard to squeeze in guests at a time when we’re already overloaded? You bet. Does having company force us to do just that much more cooking and cleaning? Not really (see No. 1).
Paradoxically, the more we entertain, the less stressful life seems. Over the last few years, we’ve had people over an average of twice a week. We play board games, we talk, we sit in our hot tub and talk some more. When we get up the next morning, there’s a big mess waiting for us, but we’re so cheerful and relaxed that cleaning up is not the drudgery it usually is. The guests, in other words, make the mess worth it (1 Peter 4:9).
Our methods for de-complicating our lives may or may not work for you, but the biblical principles are simple enough to apply to most any situation.
Notice, though, that we prefer easy, commonsense steps. Many simplification methods are far more complicated than the lives they’re supposed to be fixing, requiring schedules, self-tests, priority lists and a hundred other tools to further complicate an already overwhelming life. Others, I think, go too far in the other direction, urging moves to the country, career changes, disposal of possessions, and the like. Not my cup of tea. I save that sort of radical change for my prenatal panic attacks when Sarah’s pregnant.
On the contrary — the smaller the change, the easier to implement and more likely to stick. As I said earlier, you don’t have to turn your life upside down; just a small shift of the balance in your favor can make a huge difference.
You can start right now: Pick up the phone and invite someone over for dinner.
Greg Hartman, a lifelong bibliophile, lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, son, daughter, a dog, a cat, and several thousand books, one of which is a copy of The Messies Manual that he plans to get around to reading any day now.