first she fell in love with materialism... and then she fell in love

Now that I'm getting into the habit of trying to be conscious of my lifestyle, I also am more attuned to references to simplicity. It's easy to see the (voluntary) eco-friendliness in the smiling faces of the Organic Campus club and the Environment Students Society, or in my co-worker's effort to organize a vintage clothing swap. There is also an upcoming CSR conference which addresses voluntary simplicity as it applies to business. The most fascinating part about keeping my eyes peeled for this kind of stuff is that it appears in what I thought were unlikely places: Vogue magazine and Good Morning America.

The January 2009 (yes, I have year-old Vogues that I enjoy as much now as the day I bought them!) issue of American Vogue includes an article, "Mommy Greenest - When her mother left the family to live off the grid in Hawaii, Lori Campbell worked hard to achieve success in Manhattan. But who really has the better life?"

The March 2010 issue has first-hand account of the voluntary simplicity choice in, "The Luxury of Less - Jessica Kerwin Jenkins leaves the thrills of the big city behind to forge a new life-on a new budget- in rural Maine."

On Thursday February 25, 2010 Good Morning America had guest Ree Drummond lead the kitchen segment to promote the cookbook she released last fall, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Ree is the writer behind the blog, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, which was one of the top 25 blogs of 2009 according to TIME Magazine. In her own words, she "traded black heels for tractor wheels" when she married a cattle rancher and "went from spoiled city girl to domestic ranch wife in the blink of an eye". (The sophisticated combination of great writing, beautiful photography, and humour have made this one of my new favourite sites!)

Campbell, Jenkins and Drummond are three very different writers with very different experiences of the simple life. Comparing them yielded some valuable personal insights:

The things we do for love
First of all, the writers are all women. Women in love. Campbell's mother moved to Hawaii 23 years ago with a tent, a stove, and her boyfriend. Campbell herself has a husband with whom she shares "a four-bedroom apartment in a "white glove" doorman building in Manhattan, a country house, and two kids in private school". Jenkins follows her husband Nico from New York City to the deep countryside of Maine. Drummond lived in LA and was studying for the LSAT when she met her husband-to-be, whom she endearing calls, "Marlboro Man" on her blog.

The conclusion I personally draw from these cases is that women support their men's decisions to live versions of Voluntary Simplicity. H. Jackson Brown Jr. must have been right when he said, “choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come ninety percent of all your happiness or misery.” I think the idea that these women's partners are showing them a life of happiness and simplicity is great, but I wonder if the women would ever have arrived at such choices on their own. Probably not.

Jenkins describes her first foray into simplicity, which followed a nasty break-up and consisted of selling off most of the designer clothes she'd accumulated while working for a magazine in Paris. A stripping away and purging of the unnecessary is definitely therapeutic - but is the creation of aesthetic (minimalist?) simplicity only useful to a) move on from a relationship and/or b) to make room for new stuff? Drummond freely and wittily admits to missing city things like regular pedicures and Starbucks visits, even though her account of life on a working cattle ranch with her (handsome, virile, perfect) cowboy and (beautiful, kind, brilliant) children seems like a modern fantasy.

So I wonder what my feelings about Voluntary Simplicity will be when I am grown up and earning a proper income and choosing a man to marry. If my husband has interior design tastes like Donald Trump, which run to covering surfaces with gold and requiring an entire quarry of Italian marble (I heard this on Access Hollywood), will I question it? Will I worry about the fossil fuels produced by transporting so much material accross the Atlantic? Or will I indulge in everything we can afford because we've worked so hard for it and want to display our wealth where our friends can see it? Conversely, if my husband is some kind of creative professional who requires a spartan farmhouse to nurture his next book/film/other project, could I hook up the wifi and just go with it? Or would I keep my high-heeled feet firmly on the city pavement?

to be continued...

mindfulness is...

... walking through a snowy campus because it is the most beautiful way home, even though it takes longer.



... noticing just how much time TV-watching can consume and making the choice to read a book insead.



... experimenting with meditation over a cup of tea at 6:30 a.m. I still don't know if I get it... but slowing down and not thinking and just trying is an exercise that makes me feel good.

i love the night life

It's the middle of the night and everything is quiet. Except, perhaps, for the movement of windowpanes because of the storm. And the cat's tiny sighing snore. This is my time to meditate.

Lately I've found that the only time I can focus is the nighttime. Daybreak is like someone pressing "Play" on a dozen tracks that run in my mind from hour to hour. Every day is different and my schedule is such that I am always thinking of the next location at which I need to be (on time, always). When I list the tasks that have to be done I think what a great personal assitant I would make for myself; simply managing the business of living. These are the days I'll miss when if I settle down to a 9-5 rhythm post-grad.

I think part of living consciously is taking time to just be. Surrounded by the peacefulness of night I have clarity - I know what I have to do over the next 24 hours, over the weekend, over the next 3 months, to stay on track with my goals. I'm not comparing myself to anyone or selling anything to anyone or proving myself to anyone. I remind myself that the race is long but it's only with myself.

goop, glorious goop

Gwyneth Paltrow's online newsletter, GOOP, featured an article about meditation.

more evidence of a movement

Totally not surprised to discover other blogs about VS:

Adventures in Voluntary Simplicity: Follow along as a former highly-paid lawyer gives up a life of material comfort and unencumbered excess, and embraces the beauty and freedom of simple happiness.

Choosing Voluntary Simplicity: About finding balance in your life, connecting with who you are, and creating a lifestyle where you wake up each morning eagerly anticipating the day ahead.

Welcome to Voluntary Simplicity: Experiments in freedom

now this is my kind of test

I've enjoyed taking tests and quizzes to learn about myself since I started buying fashion magazines (remember Sassy from the 90's? YM? CosmoGIRL?). Now I've found another test, which won't tell me which of the Spring trends fits best with my personality but will contribute to my desire to live consciously.

Penelope Trunk of the Brazen Careerist blog recently wrote, Test: Is your life happy or interesting? which is based on her research about happiness. She proposes that A) an interesting life and a happy life may be mutually exclusive, and B) individuals should pursue either an interesting life or a happy life, because C) your overall level of contentedness is based on creating a life around the goal that is best for you. I'm going to include my answer and comments for each of the test's questions below, but I also suggest reading the full blog post at Trunk's site. Here we go:

1. Did you relocate away from family for a better job or another more interesting experience?
I would relocate for a more interesting experience. I'm not afraid of having to make new friends (I consider friends to be family). (-1)

2. Did you relocate to be near family?
I would relocate again to be near ageing parents. I guess questions 1 and 2 are a wash. (+1)

3. Are you nationally recognized as being great at doing something or do you have nationally-recognized expert knowledge in something? Or are you reorganizing your life in order to achieve this end?
Ever since I won a national competition, I would say that yes I am reorganizing my life in order to develop expert knowledge. (-1)

4. Were you a happy child?
Yes (+1)

5. Do your friends pray?
No

6. Do you need your kids to go to a school that is recognized as excellent in national rankings?
Yes (-1)

7. Do you have fat friends?
No

8. Do you have an opinion on Picasso?
Yes (-1)

9. Do you have three friends who are a Jew, a Muslim and a born-again Christian?
No

10. Are you a Republican?
I'm not sure. Pass on this question.

11. Do you think Christmas is a national holiday?
Yes (+1)

12. Have you been to a therapist?
No

13. Do you know the difference between $70 eyebrows and $20 eyebrows?
Yes (-1)

14. Can you tell the difference between real diamonds and fake diamonds.
(Trick question. A maximizer will have tried to learn to figure it out and will have learned that even experts can’t without a special tool.)

15. Have you tried on a pair of $200 jeans?
Yes (-1)

16. Do you think this test is BS?
No (Trunk explains, "People with interesting lives do not get offended that they cannot be happy. Happy people are offended that they cannot have interesting lives.")

Score: -3
Which means: I have a desire for interestingness over happiness

Conclusions:

• My desire to be the best and have the best (education, eyebrows, etc) make me what is called a Maximizer. I feel happier just knowing that I shouldn't expect to be happy with the status quo. Ambitous people are rarely content.
• I form opinions on subjective topics (like Picasso) because I value the interesting. I must be, or want to be, very interesting indeed because I have very strong opinions on fashion, food, film, and other cultural endeavors.
• In our class, we often ask how our society can wake up to the environmental crisis, become aware of its destructive (materialistic?) patterns, and adopt voluntary simplicity. One way could be to appeal to those who seek Happy more than Interesting.

happiness and pleasure

This week, our class had a guest speaker who presented his theory on the confusion between Happiness and Pleasure. It's interesting to think about just how many things that we think make us happy perhaps only give us pleasure. Over the past few days I've become conscious of how often I use the word "happy" to describe the way I feel about things like new clothes, chocolate, and coffee. I include these in my life as often as possible because I enjoy they way they make me feel, so while I wouldn't necessarily be a less happy person if I skipped dessert or cancelled shopping plans, I would definitely miss the pleasure derived from the experiences. At what point does consumption become excessive? At what point is it an expression of an addiction to pleasure?

If we think of "addiction" without its most extreme connotations of wasted lives and drug highs, we can define it as a compulsion to pursue pleasure. And there are so many little pleasures - instances of positive reinforcement - that collectively impact everyday life. The practice of tipping in the service industry is one example. My hair stylist may perform the same quality cut and blow-dry over and over, but if I tip him more than usual at a particular visit he'll wonder (perhaps subconsciously) what it was he did to merit the extra reward. He'll try to replicate that service the next time because the cash bonus for making me feel beautiful is a pleasure to him.

The practice of logging on to facebook is another example. I would only need to check this social utility every few days in order to keep track of my acquaintances' goings-on, but I find myself on the site multiple times per day. Why? The reward of doing so is unpredictable. Maybe someone will have written on my wall. Maybe someone will have sent me a private message. Maybe someone else will have invited me to join a group or attend an event. The maybes make it worthwhile. Finding nothing since the last logon is like a scratch-and-win lottery ticket that reads, try again next time. Finding something is an affirmation that YES, my friends use facebook during the day and night as I do, and YES, they care enough to direct thoughts/feelings/typing energies toward me. I think that my generation has made facebook a success because we are addicted to the pleasure of knowing that we matter to others. That people would notice if we suddenly vanished to a deserted island with no internet connection.

When I began this entry I didn't plan to segue from the issue of overconsumption to a suggestion about the psychological need for social networking, but I do think the link is valid. If the developed world over-consumes resources and rejects frugality because happiness is confused with the pleasure of driving SUVs/eating meat daily/taking on credit card debt to "keep up with the Joneses"/etc, are we also confusing connection over the internet with real connection to each other? Has the pleasure of counting our "friends" trumped developing those friendships face-to-face?

making memories by making muffins

I bake exactly two things: ginger cookies and bran muffins. This is not to say that I wouldn't be willing to attempt other recipes; I just believe that they should be left to pastry chefs, grandparents, and other experts. Modern economic theory holds that it's important to specialize, so one might say that I've developed a sustainable competitive advantage in my family by becoming the best at ginger cookies and bran muffins. Yet the value in making muffins is not just the satisfaction of pulling a perfectly golden brown batch from the oven, because the process itself is meditative and fun. Especially if you opt to use your own energy rather than an electric mixer. Making muffins on Sunday is my simple way to ensure that there will be something naturally nutritious and yummy to grab at breakfast or snack time throughout the week. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients
-1&1/2 cups All-bran cereal
-1&1/4 cups milk

-1&1/4 cups organic flour
-1 tsp cinnamon
-0.5 tsp nutmeg
-1.5 tsp baking powder
-0.5 tsp baking soda
-0.25 tsp salt

-1/4 cup grapeseed oil
-1/3 cup molasses
-1 egg
-1 cup raisins and dried cranberries

Directions
(1) Preheat oven to 400F
(2) Combine All-bran and milk, let sit
(3) Sift dry ingredients together
(4) Add oil, molasses, egg and raisins to the All-bran and milk
(5) Mix dry ingredients with wet ingredients
(6) Bake for 20 minutes or until firm

another simple pleasure: Muffin Films!

trust me on the sunscreen

In 1997, Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schumich wrote the article, "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young". With the tone of a commencement address, it offers the kind of wisdom that I appreciate more and more with every passing year of life experience. I discovered the piece set to music on Baz Luhrmann's 1998 album, Something for Everybody, which my mom and I loved to listen to in the car on our daily commute. I didn't realize how much I had internalized the song's lessons until I caught myself dispensing the same advice to friends. I say things like, "the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young" or "your choices are half chance; so are everybody else's" or "don't expect anyone else to support you" without consciously trying to quote Schumich. And the older I get, the more I see these things are true.

I think taking time to reflect on the Suncreen Song is a small step toward living with more simplicity because it is an exercise on perspective. As a business student I enjoy mapping my goals according to academic and material attainment - a CA designation, an MBA, a Burberry trench coat, a Birkin bag, a cottage in Muskoka,the ability to donate money to my alma mater and to the arts - but it's equally important to plan for how I want to feel once I have these things. When the CV is polished and the closet stocked with luxury goods, what's left is the everyday living. Being close to the people I love... taking care of my body... having a garden... appreciating all the possibility of being young because I too will get old eventually... maybe life really is that simple.

what is voluntary simplicity?

Duane Elgin, Wharton MBA and leader in the VS movement, describes Voluntary Simplicity as, "living in a way that is outwardly simple and inwardly rich."

Today is the first time I have thought about "simplicity" or "mindful living" as a movement. My professor has referred me to some excellent articles and research by Elgin and his peers, which I am looking forward to reviewing, but I feel I should use my current perspective as a layperson/newbie/outsider to all this and tell you my assumptions about VS. Topics that come to mind are:

Sustainability: I think that striving to live simply must accomplish many of the goals of living sustainably. For example, when I pack my lunch for school in reusable containers, I get the simple pleasure of preparing my own food the way I like it and anticipating lunchtime, I minimize my contribution to the trashcans which are always full of the packaging from the food bought in and around the school, and I sustain the balance in my bank account :)

Scandinavian Style: I mean this in a very broad way. My interest in the art, design, cultural traditions, and business practices from the region stems from my own Scandinavian-Canadian heritage, and the uniting theme always seems to be simplicity. Think of the clean lines of Swedish Ikea's product offerings, or the fact that Finland's Nokia was named the "world's most sustainable technology company" by the Dow Jones sustainability index. The Danes have a word, Hygge, which I understand to be a philosophy for living simply and well. The Hygge House blog has a great definition of the idea. I couldn't help but notice that the films we watched in class (The 11th Hour and Who Killed the Electric Car) were targeted to an American audience and highlighted the overwhelming resource consumption and waste creation of the United States. I wonder how much your ability to live simply is dicatated by the country you're in? Or by your culture's attitude towards nature and possessions?

Tree Hugging: I confess, when I think about Voluntary Simplicity I think about Tree Hugging. We use the words "tree hugger" when creating a consumer profile in a marketing course or describing the typical opposing voice to the interests of "big business". But who is really a tree-hugger? How often do people describe themselves as such? Am I a tree hugger? What does a tree hugger look like?

Simpleton: A "fool" or "stupid person", according to the definition on Dictionary.com. If Elgin's use of the term "outwardly simple" triggers negative connotations for me, perhaps it does for others as well? From a brand management perspective, I would perhaps prefer to be perceived as outwardly classic, straighforward, elegant, pure, or unaffected than just simple.

It will be interesting to revisit these topics at the end of the process and see if and how my perspective changes.