Living the Simple Life: The Basics (part one)

I’ve had a lot of time to read and to watch documentaries as of late.  And I’ve had time to spend some of my quit smoking fund money on ordering more books online. I finally bought a copy of classic books I haven’t read yet like The Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22 and The Lottery.  A couple of days ago, I placed an order for more books about insects but also for books about living in the wild, namely: We Took to the Woods and Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills.  One of my retirement dreams is to live off the grid, in a simple but efficient community.  A lot of people laugh when I tell them about this but to me, it’s an important goal.  I need to know if it’s possible and I want to read about people who have done it. Mostly, I want to be self-sufficient and I have no desire to show off my living quarters.  I want to live, simply.

I’ve lived in various cities in Northern Ontario, like Chelmsford, Sudbury, Elliot Lake and North Bay.  Elliot Lake was one of the more startling experiences I’ve had so far because it taught me about what life is like when you live in a city that no longer has a viable economy.  Elliot Lake’s economy revolved around the mining of uranium but the city didn’t diversify its sources of employment for residents so that when the uranium dried up, there was suddenly a gigantic amount of unemployment.  They’d made a classic mistake – they’d depended almost entirely on the mining sector.  This is something that’s always worried me about Sudbury. When I lived in Sudbury, it had the third highest unemployment rate in the country.  So, the mayor at the time, Jim Gordon, brought in call centres.  I suppose it’s a good short-term intervention, but now you had a city where people with Masters degrees were making 10$ an hour.  You had a city where your top three employers (Inco, Falconbridge and the call centres) employed people to work around the clock but they wouldn’t allow a 24 hour grocery store to open!  In order to combat unemployment and to do “something” with the city, Elliot Lake announced itself the “retirement capital of the world”.

I would not move to Elliot Lake if I was retired.  I would, if it didn’t involve living in the actual city of Elliot Lake.  On the outskirts, sure.  But in the late 90′s, that city felt sick. It felt gloomy.  I saw too many bored and pregnant teenagers.  Too many drunk people at all times of the day. Too many people who just didn’t have anything to do and who weren’t creative enough to occupy themselves with non-toxic activities. And that’s the kind of societies that we create when we lack imagination.  We ask that people a) fit in and b) become dependent.

In my late teens, I became homeless.  I bounced around from friend’s house to friend’s house, so I was never without shelter, but I didn’t have a fixed address.  And then, I had to find a way to become self sufficient.  So I applied for social assistance.  They gave me a cheque for $75 dollars and said ‘here, find an apartment, give the $75 to the landlord and when we’ve confirmed through a home visit that you’ve secured a place, we’ll send you the rest of your monthly allowance’.  So, the search began. Imagine calling up landlords and explaining to them that you only have $75 for rent but that you’ll pay the rest as soon as your first welfare cheque comes in! I lucked out and found a decent place but only because the landlord I found also happened to work as a social worker.  So I had a place, but I didn’t have food and didn’t have any furniture.

A friend’s dad happened to work for a local charity so he brought me a couple of chairs and a single size mattress.  He also brought one of those really old-style television encased in a wooden frame.  The TV didn’t work but at least I could use the top of it as some sort of shelf. Oh and he donated plates, forks, knives and spoons and a couple of glasses, pots and pans.  And that’s all I had. In order to feed myself, I had to use the local food bank which operated out of a church.  After signing up for my first visit, I had to endure a “talk” with one of the priests. It last almost two hours and he spoke on and on about evils and Jesus this, Jesus that, blah blah.  I was too scared to tell him that I was an atheist for fear that I wouldn’t be able to get food!  The food itself was horrible.  Opened boxes of Kraft Dinner, extremely old produce, warped cans that you wouldn’t be able to open with a can opener.  You took what you could and that was that.

Most of the time, I only ate one meal a day and it was almost always a medium box of potato wedges and chicken from the local grocery store, followed by a fruit cup.  I’ll never forget the time that the neighbours upstairs invited me for venison steaks.  It was the BEST food I’d ever had, even to this day.  And this is probably only because I had gone without for so long.

Oh, and I did all of this will only one “working” leg – my left leg was in a Jones bandage, recovering from a bunch of ligament injuries after dislocating my knee.

But it was ok. I hosted game nights with my friends from high school.  The only caveat was that we all had to sit on my living room carpet because I didn’t have furniture! But they loved it.  Coming over to my place was like going on a camping trip.  When my leg healed, I began to walk everywhere. I discovered more about Chelmsford than I had when I lived with my parents or with friends.  I learned how expensive things are. I learned how to never take some things for granted again: like a working fan during a heat wave!  And then I learned that I didn’t want to depend on a welfare cheque, I didn’t want to be one of those old guys at the welfare office who whined about how life wasn’t fair.

As much as I’d learned from that experience, I kept making mistakes along the way.  Whether it was money or living arrangements, if there was a way to screw things up, I’d find it!  But like anything else, we can’t swear to do things right unless we actually change our approach.  So, I made changes and left for Ottawa: the land of opportunity.  And opportunities were indeed abound here!  I was happily employed within a week of moving, making more money than I’d have made had I stayed in Sudbury.

Since then, I moved from the suburbs into an apartment in the heart of downtown.  I found balance between living cheaply and paying for luxury.  My compromise was that I would move into my expensive apartment because I can access everything I need simply by walking.  And in a city like Ottawa, it also means less noise from neighbours, less violence, less drugs, etc. For the past two years, that has proven true.  For the first time in my life, I also bought furniture.  I paid about $500 dollars to furnish it with shelves, tables, chairs and book cases.  The rest were either gifts (like my bed) or were given to me for free.

I have STUFF.  This is the most ‘traditionally complete’ apartment I’ve ever had.  I give myself permission to buy myself some things here and there.  At work, I’ve adorned my desk with a bunch of stuff like talking movie character dolls and statues and plush toys.  It embodies the spirit of the environment I work in and I’ve had no regrets in spending cash on that.  It makes me smile on a daily basis.  What I can’t stand spending money on is on stuff that has no other purpose than to raise a person’s perceived stature in the world or to make life easier.

I wrote an article about gadgets a while ago but what I didn’t mention is that gadgetry fits a certain lifestyle.  Gadgets are made for people who still care about how they appear to others.  It’s not gadgets that are the problem, it’s how we live our life.  I think people are really afraid of things like silence and words on paper – so they listen to music 24×7 and talk on their iPhone in waiting rooms, in the elevator or when taking a crap in a public restroom.

We also make too much stuff that is apparently intended to make life easier.  We’ve been led to believe that fast is good and slow is bad.  Slap chop, good – cutting your veggies with a knife, bad.  Frozen dinners, good – learning how to cook, bad.  Snowblower good – getting some exercise, bad. It’s not like these were inventions that were made to accomodate people with disabilities; these were made for able-bodied, healthy individuals who are in a rush!

When I worked for a Crown corporation in Ottawa, my boss was really into this thing called “The Secret”.  In fact, he took us all into a room and forced us to watch the movie. I drank an iced cap, dried it up and made a sculpture with it while the movie played.  I was really bored and didn’t have the heart to say to him: IT’S A SCAM.  Life doesn’t hold any secrets.  Everything is right there in front of you.

You want to be happy?  Live simply.  Get out of debt, be nice to people, get a job to pay the bills and make enough to put some aside. Spend time with the people you love.  Nurture your friendships and if they’re not good friends, drop them and find new ones.  Keep active – humans were not made to sit in an office for 8 hours and then sit at home for another 8 hours.  Eat good food.  If it comes in a box and has ingredients you can’t pronounce, then it’s probably not that good for you.  Spend time alone and get to know what you like and don’t like.  Stand up for yourself and for others, out of principle. Don’t do stuff because it’s easy, do it because it’s right.

Stop caring about what others will think of you.  Nobody cares.  The people who care about what you’re wearing, what you own and how sexy you are, are the same people who won’t call you or come and visit when you’re sick or poor (because they don’t think that they too can become sick or poor because you know, it’s so unfashionable!).  So stop trying to impress them.

Watch your television shows online – some TV is worth watching, it’s the commercials that aren’t and this way, you’re less prone to channel surf. Do some things that require a lot of effort or that scare you.  Be more concerned that your kids become good people than whether or not your boy is playing with dolls or that your girl is a tomboy.  Plant something, anything and keep it alive.  Do stuff for people without expecting anything in return.  Stop wanting to be promoted – be satisfied with the job that makes you happy and not the one that pays you the most.  Spend more time with children and animals.  Stop taking things so seriously, make funny faces with the kids!  If you’re addicted to something, quit.  Cold turkey.  Break the addiction.  Stop buying shit.  Stop running away.  Slow down.  Stop reading self-help books and starting helping yourself. Go back to the basics: food, shelter, water and slowly work your way up.

Hippies good, Hipsters bad.

You know who knows a lot about life?  Thoreau, Emerson, sure. Einstein, Hawking, yep. But, I think that stand up comedians know more about it than anyone else.  They’re able to observe life and reflect it back to us – we laugh about it, but sometimes, the truth is pretty scary!  But like bad writers, there are a lot of bad stand-up comedians.  Go to your local comedy club a few times and eventually, you won’t be able to tell them apart because they’ve been led to believe that the only way to make people laugh is to talk about their dicks.

But then there are people like George Carlin, who tell you everything you need to know about life, in the most honest way possible:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

For part two of this series, I want to examine things like planned communities and ecovillages – is it possible to engineer a healthy community with a local economy that isn’t comprised of people trying to take advantage of other people?  Can we become independent of large corporations?  Is it possible to properly educate our kids to become critical thinkers, to encourage their curiosity and to teach them useful skills?  Or are we just left to our own devices, to try live simply amidst chaotic societies?

Have you found ways to simplify your life?

Related posts:

1. The joys and sorrows of living alone