GetSat

Katherine Hauswirth is but one of the Get Satisfied authors who relate their individual stories of finding satisfaction in our recently published book Get Satisfied: How Twenty People Like You Found the Satisfaction of Enough. Each voice is unique..... as is yours. Wander on over to the web site to learn more and also share your experiences and insight.

Here's an excerpt from Katherine's story:

“Ignoring Walden”

As a writer, it is embarrassing to admit that I don’t much like Henry David Thoreau. Every nature book I pick up alludes to Walden, and I’ve read quotes by Thoreau that are singularly brilliant. Despite the reputation that precedes the book and its author, twice I’ve picked up Walden and twice I’ve found myself annoyed by the flowery language and by Thoreau’s entitled-sounding, all or nothing, breakaway attitude toward simple living. I am the first to admit that part of my anti-Walden impulse is just plain jealousy. I have fantasies of living solo in a cabin and writing my opus (although I would prefer not having to build the cabin). But there is more to my self-imposed exile from Walden Pond than green-eyed envy.

Radical simplicity—you know, the quit your job, grow your own food, live off the grid type of existence—works for some. But it scares most of us. It scares some of us so much that we even shy away from not so radical simplicity, where the move toward a simpler existence can mean very gradually weaning ourselves from the comforting teat of complacency while we awaken to the natural world. The start of this personal growth can be nothing more than happenstance—no manifesto involved. My first steps toward simplicity were more like stumbles in the dark. . . . .


I am no Thoreau. I doubt I will ever find myself alone in a cabin for more than a few days. Compared with Thoreau’s quest, my changes have been more timid, more gradual, and more accidental. But still, both my move away from suburbia and my rejection of my nursing career were departures from some very comfortable zones, and it would have been easier, at least in the short term, to avoid those choices. Each transition, though difficult at first, reflected my becoming more in tune with who I really was. I learned the first tenet of simple living: to think and act on one’s own. It feels good to live beyond musts and shoulds, to break from the status quo. My attraction to voluntary simplicity is an outgrowth of this gradual breaking away, of reappraising what is normal, what is enough for me, what I need to feel satisfied.

When I began to read about others who sought life beyond the treadmill of expectation, my explorations were isolated from action. I wanted to immerse myself in nature, but I didn’t want to get into environmentalism. I wanted a less commercial perspective, but I didn’t reduce my trips to the store. Only recently did I connect my disdain for material and mental clutter with what it represents: a turning away from any habit that obscures my deepest, truest priorities. I also started to connect my personal actions with a larger picture. I take pleasure in every opportunity to make decisions, knowing that each one ripples out beyond me, if only in small ways, to the world at large.

In truth, I am still in the stage where I am mostly thinking. I am not a vegetarian yet, but I am eating less meat and exploring the next step (fish only). I haven’t led any protests, but I have written to the government about our energy and foreign relations policies. I haven’t disposed of all my possessions, but I am increasingly likely to put off a new purchase and to share my wealth.

Observation is important to my lifestyle, and I reap tons of satisfaction from considering what’s before me, recognizing meaning and beauty within the seemingly mundane world. I wait for the wren who naps in my porch eaves every spring. I rejoice in the nature trail that’s hidden just beyond the highway, in the wriggly worms that my son Gavin scoops up from the asphalt after a storm. It’s not just nature, although nature is primary. It is also finding an inspiring book among a lackluster garage sale selection or bagging up clothing I no longer need for donation. Countless small things like these bring me pleasure.

In exploring simplicity discussion forums online, I ran into an anti-status-quo faction that had become a new status quo in the narrower world of that group. They criticized people for buying a new washing machine or questioned whether an eager new simplicity seeker really needed that consignment shop trip. These were the deprivation-proud radicals who insisted that simplicity was an all-or-nothing commitment.

On one extreme of the simple-living spectrum are the territorial types who feel the need to surpass others, who equate ambivalence with weakness. On the other are magazines trying to convince us that scaling down requires more purchases: we have to go out and stock up on wholesome, charming, simplicity-related supplies. Sometimes I want to cut through the media babble and be more of an uncompromising idealist; sometimes I want stacks of new boxes and shelves for organizing my kitchen. I can be attracted to either impulse, depending on my mood. But what really feels right is striving for independent thought and shunning programmed activity of any kind. I believe that we can all find ways to lighten our stress as well as our imprint on the earth, but like all change this will happen only in fits and starts, the sum of our own individual paces. . . . .

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Katherine Hauswirth is a writer (technical by day, creative by stolen moments) who lives near the Connecticut shoreline. Her blog, Inching Toward Simplicity: Pragmatics and Prose (http://inchingsimplicity.blogspot.com), includes both real-life tips and philosophical musings on the effort to simplify. She has been published in The Writer, The Writer’s Handbook 2003, Pregnancy, Pilgrimage, Snowy Egret, Funds for Writers, Writers Weekly, and many other print and online publications. Her first book, Things My Mother Told Me: Reflections on Parenthood, is available on amazon.com.