Living well with less

By Mike VanBuren
From the Late May 2014 North Woods Call

     Once upon a time, I went to a local electronics store to make a simple purchase
     A friend had given me an old outdoor television antenna. I needed a hundred feet of wire and a rotor kit to hook it up.
     I had never previously owned an outdoor antenna.  For years, I'd been content with fuzzy-looking broadcast channels.  I'd grown used to unfocused double images of network news anchors. But now I had a chance to bring a little clarity to my life.  And I was determined to do so.
    At the electronics store, the twenty-something clerk looked at me like, "You can't be serious." He couldn't grasp the fact that I didn't have cable TV.  He offered to fill this void by selling me a satellite dish system. For a few dollars a month, he said, I could get hundreds of channels.
     But I didn't want hundreds of channels. I was quite satisfied knowing that I'd be getting better TV reception than ever before—and almost for free.  But the clerk didn't see it that way.  In his eyes, my lack of passion for personal improvement was a serious problem.
     That's the trouble with "consumer" cultures.  Most of us have more than we need and don't even realize it.  We're constantly foraging for the latest gadgets, newest cars and biggest homes.  Never mind that such desires usually bring more headaches than they're worth.
      Even after foreign terrorists flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania—when we probably should have been called to sacrifice and to conserve resources for a larger war effort—President George W. Bush told us to go shopping.
      What was that all about?
      I think Henry David Thoreau had it right when he called upon us to "simplify, simplify."  After all, the essence of our lives is not found in material things and technology—no matter how revolutionary they are. True spiritual growth and contentment rise from uncluttered lives.
      I've been reading lately about a movement known as "voluntary simplicity."  This involves living —and actually having more—with less.  More time, joy, peace, satisfaction and meaning with less money, stress, possessions, competition and isolation.
     It has nothing to do with depriving ourselves, or living in poverty.  It has everything to do with being content with what we have, finding joy in less and reconnecting with other people and the natural world that sustains us.
      Now I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to ignoring this advice.  I struggle each day against the impulse to buy things that I think will add happiness and value to my life.  They seldom do.
     It's usually the simple things that can't be purchased in any store which mean the most. Things like more time for family and community.  Less worry about possessions. And greater freedom—to live and grow and love without constraint.
     It has been said that there are two ways to get enough—accumulate more, or desire less.  Less, it seems, is truly more.
      And that's probably the clearest signal I'll ever get from the battered old television antenna that still towers over my house.