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Lately I keep reading and hearing about a hot new trend
among my fellow middle-aged Baby Boomers called
Simplification.
As I understand it, when their
lives became hectic and overwhelming, they decided to scale
back and take up a simpler and cheaper way of life.
As someone who went through this before it was
fashionable, my sense of public duty compels me to issue
certain warnings, the principal one being that
cheaper
does not mean simpler.
Start with routine activities, like dinner. It is certainly cheaper to concoct an entree from brown rice, haunch of road-kill squirrel and Dumpster-dive vegetables.
But as for simplicity, TV dinners beat cooking from scratch. A run to a fast-food franchise offers even more simplicity. Even simpler is just to call a caterer, who will even take the dirty dishes away after the meal is done.
Taking out the trash is another routine activity. I've simplified it by getting a one-cubic-yard Dumpster and tossing everything I don't want into it. The trash truck comes by every Friday morning, and that's that.
But most of the Simplifiers I've read about make this a lot more complicated.
They sort their rubbish into brown glass, green glass, clear glass, newsprint, slick paper, aluminum, copper, various grades of plastic, etc. Then they have to take this sorted and stored material to the appropriate recycling depots, which can involve half a day of driving around.
For all I know, they're saving money and preserving the Earth for the next seven generations.
But I have tried both approaches, and believe me, just tossing the trash is much simpler. If society ever runs low on this stuff, the prices will rise to make it worth mining the landfills. Until then, I want to live the simple life, not the Simplification Lifestyle.
The Simplifiers, judging by what I read, also perform a
lot of do it yourself
repairs.
Replacing a bathroom floor yourself means buying materials (always the wrong kind and quantity) and tools (most of which will be lost by the time you need them again, if ever), and then spending the better part of a week in agonizing contortions.
If you truly want simplicity in this or related efforts, you hire a contractor.
Again, I speak from experience here, but I urge you to think for yourself. Which is the more difficult action:
A) Writing a check?
B) Learning to sweat-solder so you can replace the water pipe that you accidentally drove a nail into?
There is the argument that by saving all this money on the project, the Simplifier comes out ahead.
By and large, it is a bogus argument, at least in our economic system, which is based on the teachings of the 18th-century political economist Adam Smith.
Smith came up with something called the division of
labor.
It means that if you do what you're good at,
you can afford to pay other people to do what they're good
at.
Over the years, I've discovered that I come out ahead if I pretty much stick to writing, and use the proceeds, meager as they may be some months, for paying other people to perform their specialties.
It took me years to learn this, since I was raised by
people who would be considered Simplifiers now, although
then, we were just considered poor.
My mother sewed
our clothes and often butchered one of the backyard
chickens for dinner, and my dad built our house and worked
on the family car.
I grew up thinking that it was wrong to pay outsiders to replace a muffler or change the oil. For years, I did that stuff myself, just like a good Simplifier.
But one frosty February morning, the car needed a new muffler. Further, I couldn't persuade myself that getting my fingers stuck to cold metal, while oily road grit fell into my eyes, would improve my life.
Feeling rather sinful, I took the car to a garage. A few weeks later, when we needed some more outlets in a room, I called an electrician. When I wanted some good beer, I didn't grind malt and fill the mash tun -- I just went down to the brewpub and bought a growler to go.
My life got simpler. I quit worrying about things that had bothered me before, and spent more time thinking about things that I wanted to think about -- which is what the Simplifiers say they're getting.
I'm not too sure what they really want, but it seems obvious that it isn't simplification.
A truly simple life would involve a trust fund, a tropical island and a phalanx of servants. In other words, the more money you have, the simpler your life because you don't have to worry when the car starts making funny noises.
The trendspotters have told us there is a movement
toward people trying to get by on less money after cutting
back on their day jobs -- but just about any other name
would be more accurate than Simplicity.
Living
without money is a lot more complicated than living with
it.
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