Copyright 1999 by Linda Breen Pierce. All rights reserved.
You are in for a treat. The stories in this book are rich in texture and color, the warp on which you will find yourself weaving reflections about your own life. Some people here may have made choices just like the ones you have found, affirming decisions that seemed obvious to you but odd to others. You might be inspired by details in these stories to take the next steps towards reclaiming your life. Since the participants in The Pierce Simplicity Study were delightfully candid about their mistakes, there might be a story here that saves you from setting off down an ill-conceived path. Linda weaves her own experiences and insights throughout and brings a great deal of joy and respect to the telling of each story. The characters are very different from one another, and she molds words around the framework of each life that highlight their unique courage and goodness. I can just imagine her pleasure at sitting with these 200 or so interviews, jewels every one, sifting for meaning and pattern. I was personally struck with the radical sanity of these people. They are subversively ordinary. They have the uncommon virtue of common sense. Most still live in houses, drive cars and have jobs. The sanity comes from the fact that they have pruned out the dead matter from their lives. This cutting out of excess, like having the huge elm tree in our back yard trimmed, actually makes the living being more handsome, more itself. At first blush, most folks here seem so wholesome that you could wonder if you'd hit a minor speed bump in the space-time continuum and ended up in the Midwest in the 50's. They enjoy such innocent luxuries as time for family and leisure and evening walks in the park. This very ordinariness is extraordinary in a world coming rapidly unglued. Their common sense reminds me of the story of two novice Zen monks arguing about whose master was more evolved. One claimed that his teacher was so powerful that he could stand on one bank of a river and write his name in the sand on the other shore. "That's nothing," the second one said (thus winning the debate), "When my master is hungry he eats and when he is tired he sleeps." Modern life, with all its overload, stress and clutter, has become a form of senseless torture, and the genius of the people profiled here is that they have figured out how to stop hurting themselves. But don't mistake the simple life for the sedate life. While these people are embracing a more measured pace and shunning the fast lane, there's plenty of high drama in these pages. There's nothing like facing divorce, disease or death (as no small number here did) to quicken the blood and bring priorities into exquisite relief. And, while most of these folks spend way less on stuff, they often indulge in travel, philanthropy and (for me the grandest quest of all) finding ways that their gifts match the needs of the world. For them, "simplicity" means being more alive than they've ever been. As Linda says again and again, the simple life isn't the easy life. Each soul here is enormously courageous. The conflicts in their lives have not been trivial. It's taken most of them a great deal of time, introspection and explanation to arrive at their chosen sanity. They are intrepid explorers, leaving the security of the known for the hoped-for brighter tomorrow. Quite a few have fallen down and taken wrong turns along the way-and kept on keeping on. They have inherited the American predilection for individualism and autonomy (but rarely lose that balancing American virtue of neighborliness). Some are "off the grid" in terms of self sufficiency, but even those who are plugged into urban culture are stitching together a unique quilt of life-pieces that makes them truly one-of-a-kind. Once you've read Donna's essay on The Tao of Nobody or met Q or Holli-Anne or Blake or the Brophy's or, well…all of them, you will see what I mean. I detect a thin note of loneliness weaving through many of these stories as well. Having gotten off the work-and-spend treadmill, people often feel out of step with their social context. A few of those profiled lost some of their old friends; several became more reclusive and solitary (though many use their freed-up life energy to engage with their community and service projects more vigorously). People often write to authors like me asking for guidance on how to connect with others who share their new values and practices. So often their friendships were based on going to restaurants, theater, sports events and other activities that entailed spending money. Do they demur or just order a salad or suggest a cheaper thrill? Gift giving becomes tense. How do you celebrate Christmas and birthdays and baby showers without buying expensive gifts? The homey joys of common, ordinary events can wear thin as they buck, again and again, the commodification of every aspect of daily life. Sanity and simplicity become a source of private pride but public shame. The frugal don't flaunt their choices, nor do they see them reflected in the media. Instead of being celebrated for a breakthrough into maturity, people who've come to their senses about living in balance sometimes feel subtly shunned. The pathetic irony of this dilemma, however, is that Americans are still basically thrifty people-my years of interacting with audiences across the country about Your Money or Your Life has taught me that. It's as though the ordinary, humble folks are all playing hide and seek in this big forest of advertising and malls. Someone just needs to end the game and say, "Olly Olly in come free." While the pervasiveness of thrift in America makes this loneliness unnecessary, the pain of it is still very real. So I doubly applaud these people for the changes they've made and Linda Pierce for celebrating them in print. I find my own journey reflected in the progression of these chapters. Disillusioned and discouraged with the "career ladder to nowhere," I left New York City 30 years ago in search of…I didn't know. Bonding with the natural and authentic way of life I started to develop, I was motivated to minimize my cash needs to liberate my time. Then I was free to learn what Frithjof Bergmann calls "high tech self-providing"-a blend of skills from food production to auto mechanics, from small-town neighborliness to spiritual practice. Having found and grounded myself, I naturally came to a passion for service. What is needed in the world? How can I provide it using my unique set of skills and abilities? That was 20 years ago and the journey has led me through planting and weeding other people's gardens, helping build others' homes and listening to others' problems. Eventually I arrived at my passion for thinking, writing and speaking about one of the burning issues of our times: how to wean Americans (and the world) from the destructive addiction to economic growth. Linda's book and my own experiences have led me to wonder about the place in our culture of this phenomenon of simple (sane, common sense) living. Are the people in these pages and the estimated tens of millions more who are making lifestyle changes merely a sidebar to the ever increasing tempo of consumerism in our world? Or are they the forerunners of a more sustainable way of living that will originate right here in the heart of Babylon and fan out across the earth in the wake of a global disillusionment with the high-buck high-life? Have we done the world a favor by running the affluence experiment and finding it wanting? Will we then have the courage to admit our errors and help the rest of the world acquire the best of the West while avoiding our worst mistakes? I for one hope that The Pierce Simplicity Study is a harbinger of a large (and largely leaderless) personal, social and political revolution. The possibilities for such a gradual grassroots shift in the tenor of our culture are truly exciting. A slow shedding of the unnecessary, an increasing attunement to the gift of being alive, a strengthening of human bonds, a tenderness and protectiveness towards the earth, an unearthing of all our quirky capacities for humor, art, innovation and caring. With luck siestas and spontaneous singing might eventually be acceptable! Or maybe the change will happen with great gusto, with a third political party thundering to center stage sporting a kind of Populist vigor and a well-thought out agenda for sweeping reforms. Or maybe this book is a testimony to the fact that the future guise of the simplicity impulse may not matter. What matters is that the people in these pages, a relatively small portion of a very large cultural cohort, demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that living more simply, soulfully and servicefully is an idea whose time is now. So, drink deep. But before you do, how about a walk around the block, a look at the birds, a chat with your mate, a letter to the editor, or a dreamy few minutes just staring out the window and not thinking about anything much at all…. See? Vicki Robin |