Valuing Things

Valuing things is at the heart of minimalism.

If you have very modest means, you may only own one of everything.

My bowl, my dress, my shoes, my pencil, my notebook.

Each item is treasured, because it was hard to come by.

A new purchase is prioritised, saved for, carefully selected, and eagerly awaited.

A much loved item that wears out or goes missing is sorely lost.

Having less, we see the true value of each item.

How many dinner sets do you need? How many mugs? How many TVs? How many cars? How many houses?

Each new multiple reduces our appreciation of the value of the one, and what it does for us.

Choosing to have fewer things, we become aware again of the value of each individual thing, and what it brings contributes to our lives.

Minimalism is about having less, and appreciating what we have.

Resting in Simplicity

Yesterday it occurred to me how restful it is to be able to embrace a simpler life. I never knew who the Joneses were that we were supposed to be keeping up with, but I did have the sense of needing to scramble to stay in touch.

When I was a teenager the sophisticated magazine for girls was Seventeen. I borrowed it from the library and was struck by the number of products women needed to buy, and routines they needed to follow to be up to date with their grooming. Cleanse, tone and moisturizer. Day and night make-up looks. Hair removal routines. Make up removal routines.

Add to that maintaining a fashionable wardrobe and good shoe selection, regular hair cutting and dyeing, going to the gym, buying a home, furnishing and decorating the home in the latest styles, running a car….In every dimension of life there seemed to be a need to spend time and money on having the right things and maintaining them, and having the right routines and maintaining those.

The advantage of a simpler approach to life is it focuses attention on what is important in each dimension of life, and allows me to cut out the unnecessary complexities. I have decided to keep my hair in a short and simple cut, with natural colour. That saves me time and money at the hairdresser. I don’t run a car. I have a small range of clothes and shoes. The more I apply the simplicity principle, the easier everyday life becomes.

What struck me in my journal writing yesterday was is the benefit if a simpler lifestyle is not just about saving time and money, or having less chores. When I say “this is enough” for me, I am also saying “I am enough”. I don’t need to be running on a never ending treadmill of acquisition and improvement to be OK. I am OK with greying hair. I am OK with second hand furniture. I am OK traveling by bus and train.

As I travel more deeply into this journey I am appreciating that resting in simplicity is about self acceptance, and giving up the race.

This image was taken at the Botanical Gardens in Niagara Falls Canada. I was taking photos on a rainy grey afternoon which seemed to suit black and white photography.

Blood on the Stage

When I was in the USA last year I stumbled upon and open-mike comedy night at the downstairs bar at my hotel. I joined in with the 30 or so people crowded into the small room to hear the performers. It was a tightknit group who got together on a regular basis to display their comedy skills, with a friendly and jovial atmosphere as you might expect. Gradually I realised that I was one of about five people in the audience who weren’t performing.

One performer was a young woman, who was clearly known to the group. For her few minutes in the spotlight, she talked about a recent experience with abortion and her families reaction to it. It wasn’t funny. She seemed extremely vulnerable, and the audience didn’t know how to react. The experience she was sharing was too recent; too raw; too painful. Whatever happens to transform a personal story into a comedy routine that everyone can laugh at wasn’t happening.

I wanted to grab an overcoat, wrap her up and take her off the stage. I wanted to somehow protect her from her painful experience, and the sharing of it. I wanted to tell her that this wasn’t the place to find the solace she was looking for. I was a stranger in a strange environment, and I didn’t do any of those things. I watched her sit down. It seemed that her story had not connected her more deeply with anyone in the group, and I feared the experience would deepen her sense of isolation.

I have also seen and experienced this type of raw over exposure in writing groups where people read their work aloud, and in sometimes in reading blogs. I have read blog posts that suggest struggles with depression that have not been met by supportive comments. I have stumbled upon one post, months old, that suggested that the person might be suicidal, with no follow up comments or posts. It saddens and frightens me when I find people reaching out for help to the internet, only to be met with silence.

When it works well, the process of creating a song, a poem, a blog post or a joke converts our personal experience into a universal story that others can relate to and understand. This very process can be healing, and create a sense of perspective about the subject matter and a feeling of connection with others. But sometimes, it doesn’t quite happen. Sometimes it comes across as just raw feeling, uncovered and unprotected.

For myself, I try to write about things that I have some perspective on, that might be of help or interest to others. Although some of these topics can be personal, I don’t write about things if I am feeling very shaken up and vulnerable. If I was seriously in need of help, I’d talk to a real person about it.

So by all means, share what is going on for you, if that feels comfortable and helpful. But remember to take care of yourself. Its not necessary to tell the world your troubles if you don’t feel OK about it. You don’t have to bleed your heart onto the stage, or the page. Your sensitive sould needs to be protected, and the best person to do that is you.

Linking Back: Shifting Priorities

You aren’t supposed to be getting two Linking Back posts back to back.  I have been busy this week sorting myself out, so that I can give this blog and other writing projects more attention. The theme for the week has been shifting priorities and making time for what is most important. Some of my reading this week has been on a similar vein.

I enjoyed a guest post on Courtney Carver’s blog Be More With Less by artist Jeane George Weigel. Jeane talks about the courage it took to leave a corporate job to pursue life as an artist, and the personal growth that has resulted. I could relate to her comment about her former life. Indeed, I could have written it myself:

I didn’t make these major changes quickly or easily. I was aware for years that my life didn’t seem to fit me, or I didn’t fit it, but I wasn’t sure what else I was supposed to do. I felt unhappy on a level I wasn’t willing to acknowledge and I used to say that if I knew what I wanted to do I’d go do it.

I am also appreciating CJ and Tammy Renzi’s book The End of Wishing Our Days Away. CJ and Tammy blog about their lifestyle change at The Great Jollyhoombah. Their story is one example of how a health crisis can call into question demanding traditional work roles and unhealthy habits. For the Jolly’s this led to a simpler and more intentional lifestyle. And fun of course. Lots of fun. They bring to mind the (mis)quote “I’ll have what they’re having”.

I had a chance to hear a woman speak who has been working on healthcare and education projects in the islands to the east of New Guinea in Milne Bay Province. When talking about the motivation for her work she described about how the people cried when talking about the lack of healthcare in their remote communities. The expression for crying its “dropping water”. She said “How can you sit and listen to people dropping tears”. A living example of compassion in action.

I have been suffering from “Be careful what you ask for” syndrome, as one quickly made intuitive decision has started a snowball effect.  Having decided to give up trying to sell greeting cards as a money-making exercise, I quickly realised that I no longer needed to maintain a separate photography blog for the purpose of promoting them. I am therefore taking a break from ImageChest Photography. I will include photographic posts here when they fit in with the flow. My final post on the photography blog, for the time being at least, was more pictures of my outing at Luna Park and Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Hot on the heels of that decision came the admission that efforts to promote my Professional Organising business have not been successful and that whole project needs a serious rethink.

These decisions are possible because am starting to feel clearer about the general direction I want to take and developing criteria to by which to judge potential projects. I want to direct my efforts to projects which contribute to my happiness and wellbeing, and stand up to the test of simplicity and lightness. I want to have time for writing and photography. This feels like the right track to be on, although letting go of some activities that were consuming a lot of time has created a gap which is a little spooky. Nevertheless, having cleared away some distractions I think I will be better able to make decisions that take me towards the future I hope to create for myself.

Linking Back – Authenticity and Intuition

This week I have been more useful than usual, helping out with wedding catering, hospital visits and shopping expeditions on behalf of others who need a hand. It has reminded me that although I have the work/life balance issue sorted for now, I need to remember to balance my digital life with life in the physical universe.

Authenticity has been a theme for me recently, and I enjoyed Sandra Pawula’s post Walking the Labyrinth to Your True Self. Sandra explores how being authentic and living with integrity can lead to personal contentment, which in turn open you up to greater kindness and compassion. I am finding that allowing myself to follow my own path this past year has helped me be more responsive to other people’s needs, as less energy is consumed in worrying about myself.

Zen Habits had an interesting guest post by Lissa Rankin called 6 Steps to Healing Yourself. Lissa is a doctor who believes that the body knows how to heal itself, and that we can benefit by being more proactive about encouraging that natural capacity. I found it interesting when she says that the bodys natural  self-repair mechanisms work best when we are relaxed, and are impeded by excessive stress. She affirms that we intuitively know what we need to be well, although we don’t always pay attention. Thats certainly been my experience so its encouraging to hear it explained by a medical practitioner.

Louise Krupski wrote a thought provoking post on her blog Simple, Meaningful and Free about the complexities of deciding whether to downsize. Her post Is This My Beautiful House  describes the experience of being “stuck in this fairlytale” of a large home with an expensive mortgage. I could relate to the struggle between a gut instinct which is saying downsize and get out of debt now, and the desire not make a financially unwise decision. For myself, I have decided to embark on an experiment of following my intuition, which means that I have sold my home and quit my job. I don’t regret it, but I do wake up a night wondering if I should be putting more in my superannuation.

Intuition as a source of wisdom about how to act in a way that is congruent with our needs and goals is a thread which runs through these posts. One thing I notice about myself is that often I will know what my intuition is telling me, but I delay acting on the pretext of “being sensible” or “thinking about it”. Thats useful and necessary up to a point, but I am capable of resisting my intuition for years, or even decades, because I am daunted by what it is telling me.

With this in mind, I have decided to try an “early intuition response experiment”. My gut feeling is telling me that selling greeting cards is not the right direction for me to take. I have been considering various methods of scaling down such as allowing the listings in the Etsy store to time out over the next few months and focussing on selling out existing stock to shops.

However my gut feeling is if I do that the Etsy store  and face-to-face sales will continue to tug at my attention and suck up my time for the sake of a few more meagre sales.  In the meantime, I won’t be concentrating on the things that are important to me, including developing my writing and finding a viable and sustainable income source. Rather than invest more time and effort in a slow exit from a losing proposition, I have decided to close the Etsy store, announce the winding down of greeting card sales, and relegate the project to personal hobby status immediately. I have an inkling that this will free up my mental space to get on with the next step.

Intuition really can be a pain in the neck. Its scary to just trust that you know what you are doing and take a leap of faith, but I think its worth seriously exploring what your intuition is telling you, and what is holding you back. Working with your intuition is like building a relationship, it requires a series of interactions over time to build trust and understanding. Time spent ignoring what your heart is telling you not only delays the specific decisions at issue, it keeps you from building that trusting relationship with yourself, and gathering momentum towards an authentic life.

A Moment of Gratitude

Gratitude is a theme which occurs fairly frequently in the blogs that I follow. I have read about keeping gratitude journals, and other gratitude practices, which help people to get in touch with the good in their lives.

For myself, gratitude has not been a strong theme or focal point. I tend to concentrate on keeping myself afloat and accepting the good and the bad as a part of life. I am inclined to be wary of exercises where you list things you should be grateful for, because I find “should” a poor motivation for any endeavour.

Recently I had an encounter with gratitude which was unexpected, and it got me thinking about its true nature.

A couple of days ago I offered to accompany a neighbour to the emergency room, as he had fallen and broken his wrist. We arrived at the hospital at 8.30 am. As it was a busy morning we were unable to see the Emergency doctor until around lunchtime. We learned that it was a bad break, and he needed to be assessed by an orthopaedic surgeon. Unfortunately there were a number of bad car accidents, and the surgical staff were all tied up in theatre most of the day.

It was late afternoon when the surgical registrar arrived. He looked fresh and alert, despite a day in theatre. He apologised for the delay, saying he had been helping a patient with horrific injuries from a terrible road accident. Despite this, he was thoughtful, professional, attentive, competent… he was everything we had been wishing for in 8 hours of waiting. He gave my friend options and was respectful of his choices; he picked up on small details that were concerning me. I mouthed a relieved “thank you” to him when nobody was looking.

What happened next surprised me, as in saying thank you, I was flooded by a feeling of gratitude to this man who had suddenly appeared and met our needs. I was grateful that he had seen and understood, and made sure that everything was attended to. I was grateful for his skill, but also his kindness and thoughtfulness. When the consultation was over, I didn’t want him to go.

The gratitude I felt towards the doctor bore no relation to the list of good things that I would have written in a gratitude journal. It wasn’t theoretical, it was a feeling that welled up from a deep place. It came from a place that is vulnerable and needs help, uncertain and looking for reassurance, lonely and looking for a companion. It came from the place that love comes from. To feel gratitude, I needed to also feel my vulnerability and my need for help and connection.

My experience at the hospital has given me a new insight into gratitude. I know now that there is a type of kindness that can’t be repaid, and doesn’t need to be. Its kindness that sees a need and meets it with compassion, without the expectation of any return or reward. The best way to receive this type of kindness is to surrender to it, and accept it thankfully.

As we parted the surgeon gave me a nod. The nod was saying thank you for coming and being with your neighbour and helping us to help him. In that moment I saw a glimmer of another dimension to gratitude, in which we were a team, relying on each other to do our part. My neighbour is grateful to me for my help, and I appreciated his patience under trying circumstances. We were both grateful to the doctor for this kindness and competence. On this difficult day of coping with an accidental injury gratitude was not a one way street or an unequal equation. We were all grateful for, and to, each other, and that was lovely.

The Cost of Earning and Owning

A recurring theme in my life over the past few years has been a gradual realisation of the true cost of earning and owning. I sometimes wonder if an interest in minimalism or simplicity comes across as a shallow pursuit, focussed on the quantity of material possessions we own. From my own experience, and my observation of other writers, there are much deeper issues involved.

For many people who pursue simplicity, minimalism, or frugality, the change in direction has been triggered by a life event, such as a major illness, or a personal or family crisis. For others its a gradual realisation that the stresses and demands of their current lifestyle are not worth the benefits.

The cost of earning a living was presented to me in the form of illness. Illness is a great teacher, but I am a slow student. I struggled with minor health issues and too many sick days throughout my working life, but it wasn’t until I contracted pneumonia, and battled for 12 months with consequent chronic fatigue, that I began to seriously question the viability of my lifestyle. I was working full-time to pay a mortgage for a unit near my work and I would need to continue to work full-time until I was 67 to pay it off. In the meantime, I wasn’t happy or fulfilled, and it seemed like my real life would have to wait until retirement. Even if I was willing to persist with this sorry situation, my health had other ideas, and I simply couldn’t get away with it.

Post-pneumonia fatigue is not so bad if you don’t try to do too much. Resting at home I was able to read and think and write. It was a very rich time for my interior life, in fact it was a much better life than my regular routine. Of course this made me feel very guilty, as I thought I should want to get back to work as soon as possible. Its not a good sign when being sick is preferable to being well.

When I returned to work part-time, I felt that I was able to maintain a reasonable balance between work and  pursuing my own interests because I was able to just do my work then switch off. However when I returned to full-time work, and more demanding projects, the balance was lost, and my stress levels and dissatisfaction began to soar. In order to do the job well I needed to focus all of my mental and emotional resources on the projects I was assigned. Such was the complexity of the work that it spilled over into my free time, consuming my thoughts in the middle of the night, in the shower, on the train. I had to watch TV or do other hobbies to switch myself off. Free time was recovery time, and there was little space for creativity.

I began to take on an idea of myself as a person with vulnerable health who didn’t like stress. However I was mistaking the symptoms for the problem. I now think that I am a creative person, who needs time and space for thinking, writing and reflecting. If I don’t have this time, I can’t thrive. I was trying to fit into a lifestyle that couldn’t satisfy me and it was costing me my health and sense of wellbeing. I was focussed on survival, and unable to find time to put into the activities that were going to make life fulfilling and meaningful.

Eventually I decided to sell off my unit. It had some features, such as a tendency to damp, that were contributing to my health problems and living there wasn’t working out. The process of selling and moving out of a unit while recovering from chronic fatigue taught me a lot about the costs of ownership.  I had a lot of things that I didn’t need or use and these had to be packed into suitcases and boxes and moved over to my Mum’s garage. Because the unit was so small I had to make multiple taxi trips to remove some of the surplus to be able to show the place to potential buyers, and to make space for further packing. This brought home to me the costs involved in owning, storing, moving and maintaining stuff.

Last year, when I did the great garage clean-up, I was going through all the furniture and boxes that had been dumped in the garage when I fled my unhealthy unit. The were all piled on top of each other so that for a couple of years I could not access a lot of my things. This indicated that I did not need most of it, although I did occasionally want something I couldn’t get to. I donated the big furniture because it was blocking access to everything else and turning the garage into a storage unit. Once that was gone, I paid to have a few things carried upstairs. I went through all the boxes and did the culling I didn’t have the energy to do when I moved. I have kept the essentials incase I want to set up my own place again, but thats just a few small pieces of furniture and some boxes of kitchen stuff and ornaments across the back wall of the garage.

I am very fortunate to be able to live cheaply with my Mum. We help each other out, and this is giving me time with her, and time to explore my own interests. It allowed me to give up work, to travel, and live on my savings while I make the transition to a different model of employment. The situation could change suddenly, and I need to be ready for an uncertain future. I don’t have a clear plan. In some ways I wish I could put in the long hours and rake in the big bucks in a traditional job, but I don’t want to do that if it means I have to sacrifice my health, happiness and creativity. Whatever path I take, its going to involve minimising the costs of earning and owning so that I can maintain my health and wellbeing, and live a meaningful life.

Thanks to Tammy Strobel for the writing prompt that led to this post.