Simplicity Would Open Doors To A Happier, Healthier World

“I once heard a story about a visit to heaven and hell. In both places, the visitor saw many people seated at a table on which many delicious foods were laid out. Chopsticks over a meter long were tied to their right hands, while their left hands were tied to their chairs. In hell, however much they stretched out their arms, the chopsticks were too long for them to get food into their mouths. They grew impatient and got their hands and chopsticks tangled with one another’s. The delicacies were scattered here and there.

“In heaven, on the other hand, people happily used the long chopsticks to pick out someone else’s favorite food and feed it to him, and in turn they were being fed by others. They all enjoyed their meal in harmony.” - Shundo Aoyama

One of the aspects of voluntary simplicity that is most attractive to me is that it encourages us to care for one another. It does this by questioning the traditional values of “getting ahead” and consuming, both of which are generally done in some kind of competition with others. Getting ahead necessarily implies that you are positioned in front of someone else, and consuming necessarily implies that by your obtaining the “thing,” someone else doesn’t obtain it, or loses out on the resources it took to make the “thing.” Once we begin to free ourselves from the mind-set that we “are” what kind of car we drive, or house we live in, or job we hold, we can then open up to each other. In return, we will have a more fulfilled, rich life that is not dictated by debt, junk and that never-ending quest for status and position.

A journalist recently asked me if voluntary simplicity was liberal or conservative politically. I mumbled, “Neither - it stands on its own,” but then thought to myself that it probably attracted more liberals. This was because it is a more traditionally liberal value to help others, for example. Awhile later I gathered with a group of simple living aficionados and we discussed this matter. “Yup,” we all agreed, “simple living is definitely more Democrat than Republican. After all,” we reasoned, “Democrats are out helping others and Republicans are out getting ahead.”

Except one of us brought up something interesting. What happens when we look past the labels and at the individual? What do we see then? We see a whole lot of Republicans and Democrats spewing forth with mounds of rhetoric and then going home and living very similar lives. You know the life: Go to work, go home, be with your family and/ or friends, weed your yard on the weekend, maybe go on a day trip, go to work, go home and so on. Not much different except the lively debates at parties. Most of us do not live what we preach. Giving money to a cause hardly counts for living. Daily living.

Here is an example. We talked about a woman one of us knew who was a staunch Republican. One of the topics this Republican woman spewed forth on was abortion. She is absolutely against abortion. This is usually where the rhetoric and moralizing leave off and daily life begins. They say “abortion is wrong,” and then go on about their daily lives. But not with this woman. For years, she has taken pregnant, ostracized teenagers into her home where she has cared for and nurtured them on a daily basis and then helped them either to create a life for themselves and their babies, or find an adoptive family.

If simple living is about encouraging us to truly take the time to care for our fellow humans, then this woman is a role model in action. When we get down to basics, does it matter if people say they are conservative or liberal? What matters is what they are doing every day with their lives. If simple living can encourage us to care more for one another, then it doesn’t matter what political or religious label we put on ourselves. If we look at it this way, my first answer to the journalist was right: Simple living transcends political rhetoric and helps us all to make the world a better place.

xxxx