General Discussion Board
Voluntary Simplicity
Posted By: Tracy R. <Tracyarts@aol.com> (205.188.200.33)
Date: Monday, 10 January 2000, at 5:19 p.m.In Response To: Passionless people (Victoria)
I think that many of us lose out zest for life because it is sucked out of us by the society we live in. We work our butts off in school to work our butts off in drudge jobs just to make the payments on our debts and hope to wind up with a few more things each year to show that we are, indeed, working for something.
The society we live in can suck the life right out of you. People are getting burned out at a younger and younger age.
I hit burnout in my mid 20's. I was working in a job where my worth was directly dependent on how much money I could bring into the company by selling the product. I was buying into the consumer lifestyle with all the material trappings of success and miserable and hating every minute of it. I literally had the very life of me drained from that lifestyle.
Frankly, it is not worth the energy I would expend to get angry about all but the most serious transgressions. The worst case of fat bigotry is nothing compared to the crap I had to deal with on a day to day basis to earn a living. I am jaded, and it simply does not matter enough to me to provoke a response. I simply refuse to allow any of my emotional energy to be spent on anything that is not really important.
We have really been embracing the voluntary simplicity philosophy lately. Deliberately getting rid of things, material and not, that are excess baggage in our lives. Do we really need it? Do we just want it? Can we do without it? As the layers of baggage come off, both material and non material, it is more and more freeing.
I am a firm believer in living beneath your means and only involving yourself with things that have meaning for you. No more getting sucked into things that are a hassle. No more stressing about things I really did not want to do in the first place. No more allowing people to have enough power over me to cause me to expend my emotional energy because of their issues. If somebody has a problem with me because of my size or whatever, it is their problem, I refuse to claim it.
It has been so incredibly freeing and it has created so much serenity to just let it all go. I can say that for the first time in my life I am totally relaxed and at peace.
I save my energy for the big crises and the things that matter to me now. I take a deep breath and ask myself "Is it worth it?" before I expend any emotional energy nowadays. If it is not, I just let it go and release it. If it is worth it, I take it on but do not dwell on it. If I can solve it in a reasonable manner, I do so. If not, I let it go.
Let the younger people go out and conquer the World, I just want to curl up on my easy chair with a cup of tea and watch the rain fall.
Tracy