I’ve had enough. I have enough. Can we please just stop already?
We went to a new church last weekend, and as first timers, Randy and I were EACH given a welcome bag that included a beautiful large ceramic coffee mug and a couple of pens with the literature that told us about the church and its programs and finances.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but when we go back to that church, I’m returning the mugs and pens. You see, we won’t ever use the mugs, and I have more than enough pens to carry us into our third reincarnation. So mugs and pens become clutter here, taking up space in our newly downsized house and in my psyche, where I’m trying hard to declutter and simplify. I’d like the church to give them to those who want, will use, and appreciate them. Surely they’ll understand that, won’t they?
Interestingly, the sermon at that service was about being content with what we have in all circumstances. It’s a great life lesson to learn and take to heart, though it’s not necessarily the American way. We are programmed (through advertising and entertainment) to think our lives will be better and happier if only we had more. More money, more time, more stuff, more of what our friends and family, the Jones, and even complete strangers, have. I know this programming is effective because Randy and I have been there, done that. In our experience though, whenever we actually did get more, it didn’t make a hill of beans of difference in how much better or happier we were. We learned a valuable lesson as we aged: more of everything simply made us slaves to that stuff, whether we realized it at the time, or not.
When we decided last year to move to Florida I started thinking about what we really used, and how much of the house we lived in regularly. I realized it’s actually far less than we had in Missouri where there were rooms that we only went in to add stuff to the piles of things we moved there but still hadn’t unpacked, or to clean because there was a visible layer of dust accumulating. It made me quite happy to choose a house here with about half the square footage and a fraction of the yard. (Randy, not so much, but this is my blog.) Since the house here had been a vacation rental and was for sale fully furnished, it was stocked with furniture, dishes, cookware, sheets and towels, and other items necessary to exist comfortably in a home. Suddenly, we had more than enough. Again.
It requires a change of heart and mind to just take things you legitimately own and simply get rid of them, with no expectation of getting something for them. Not an easy change of heart and mind, either. Lucky for us, before we left Missouri we’d been through a massive culling process before we packed only a 20-foot U-haul to bring the things we thought we couldn’t live without to Florida. We went through the culling process again in Florida and divested ourselves of things that were more than we could ever use in our lifetime. As a guide, I used this great, humorous, life-changing TED Talk video titled How Many Towels Do You Need.
Another huge down-sizing decision Randy and I made since moving here is selling one of our vehicles. It scared us, having only one car. But in the past year, 99.99% of the time, our one VW Passat was enough. And having only one vehicle to share left room in our tiny garage and trimmed down our budget for other stuff more important and valuable to us.
There’s still work to do in my life adjusting to the reality of wanting and having less. It’s an on-going, never-ending process to accept the need for less, to dispose of the excess, and to battle the tendency to accumulate and hang on to more than enough. But awareness of the problem is a first step to solving it, and Randy and I are comfortably past the awareness and acceptance stage. Regular readers of this blog know how happy, happy, happy I’ve been in the last year. Learning to live with enough as opposed to excess is a big contributor to that contentment. As the woman in the Ted Talk linked above says, when we’re not weighed down by physical stuff, there’s more room in our mental and spiritual lives for things of real value to us. I thank God for that lesson learned.
P.S. I recently heard a friend say that he and his wife told their kids to stop gifting them with things unless they could be eaten or experienced. What a great idea! So, Bill and Kay, you done good bringing the two jars of NC jelly. Thanks! And Kristine and Gary….disregard this P.S. The two Happy Pappy’s Glowing Balls you gave us are the best gift we received in years. Perfect in the new house. Thanks to you both, too.
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