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.