Musings

I remember in the long ago (80’s) past that I once tried to get friends to read a book.  The book was “Voluntary Simplicity” and it was a leftover from the hippie-dippy days of the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Basically day late and dollar short, the ideas and, in those days, even the title went over like a turd in a punch-bowl.

Looking back, at the time I was both moderately surprised and even mildly offended that no one wanted to read such a tome.  We youth that then occupied the bodies that later became us aging boomer's were busily shucking our ersatz hippiedom and working overtime to make certain that our credentials and education were in place to move on up to the elite and score our larger-than-strictly-appropriate-to-our-contribution share of the pie.  Being both charitable and cautious, I decided that I had better spend more time doing the same and getting with the program.

Well, here I am, as of today I am eligible for Medicare.  I am also about a year or so into the process of rejecting the world that I helped to create and trying to get back to the path that was forsaken so long ago.  But this interlude came back to me and I realized that all I am doing is trying to patch back together a morality that I threw over for greed.

I don’t want to even bother re-reading the book I am remembering.  I can’t even work up the enthusiasm to google the book to provide you with an author for your own edification.    Nope, the title is the book and should distant memory serve me at all, the writing wasn’t particularly good nor the concept all that alien.  The best comparison I can offer is that it was to Walden what Mindfulness training is to Meditation, a pale copy without the commitment.  Voluntary poverty was what we needed, a phony, well-supplied pursuit of status, convenience, and comfort is what we ended up with.

It is the response that I remember.  No one was interested in the least.  Some even were angry that I would dare suggest that their way was wrong.  My great shame is that I tagged along and went along.

But I think that, looking at the now, I am going to be rejected just as thoroughly as I was then.  Truth be told, I will the rejection will probably be even more forceful and anger filled.  This is simply because I am guessing that folks my age, who have played by the rules and built up their supplies of stuff will be forced down this path against their will.  Unlike the ancient fable of the ant and the grasshopper, the ants will watch their savings and plans snatched away from them and there is a fair chance that they will end up no different than the grasshoppers in that cautionary tale..

So, I am going to go forward anyway, and try to be kind and charitable.  It is not that any will starve among me and mine, but very few will still have or will be able to obtain what is currently considered their due.

Now, I suppose that I should take a moment here to explain how it wasn’t really out fault.  That the decisions and compromises that we took were forced upon us by an uncaring and demanding world.  But I am not going to do that.  Primarily because it isn’t in the least true.

I made my choices, I always knew the consequences of my actions, I just thought that I could duck out by dying at a reasonably ripe old age before the chickens came home to roost.  But current conditions make me think that the news and the world today are nothing but a bunch of chickens coming back after being ignored for these past fifty years.  In this, I am not unlike 95% of my generation.  The only difference between me and most folks out there is that they can’t believe that their way of thinking and their life choices won’t have any consequences.

We are just now starting to see the consequences gaining traction.  The world we are going into is going to be a lot less comfortable with a lot fewer amenities.  The pollution generated by a consumer economy is not magically going away anymore.  The oceans and air are not getting cleaner.  The climate system is changing in ways that even the best meteorologist doesn’t understand.  The oil that fuels the whole shebang is teetering on a downslope.

Here I sit, trying to come up with a life (or maybe ten more years) of not being a part of the problem.  Harder to do than you can ever imagine.  The world we have created here in middle class America is both seductive and insidious.  The really hard part is to come up with a way of earning one’s vittles and still attempt to hold to the “right livelihood” aspect.  I am not going to go-a-begging, and even beans and rice and a bit of pork as a condiment gets spendy in todays world.

Trying to lead a life that doesn’t contribute to the problem is a bit of a pickle.  It is just kinda sad that it took me so long to get to this place where I can finally start trying to live the life I should have.