Simple Living

We human beings, generally speaking, go out of our way to impress our fellow human beings. Like peacocks, we parade around in stylish clothes even if they hamper our movements when we work. We eat exotic imported foods even if our c heaper native foods are sometimes more nutritious. We build houses that are much bigger than our needs because, like turtles, we impress each other with the size of the shells we inhabit. Some even install TV antenna even if there is no corresponding TV set inside the house! We humans indeed are a vain lot.

And speaking of cars, most of us love to travel in grand style. But our most economy can all afford our Cadillac taste. While cars are admittedly a definite necessity for some because of the nature of the work they do, most people can get around efficiently with public transportation. If we can only eliminate, say, fifty percent of the private vehicles from our auto-infested roads, we as a nation will be much better off. Less tangled traffic. Less spiraling gas expenses. Less sickening bribes. Less suffocating pollution. Less gory accidents.

No, we can’t turn the hands of the clock backwards. We can’t go back to the Stone Age clothes, houses, or modes of transportation. Of course, we want progress, modernization, industrialization. But since we aren’t there yet, we constantly remind ourselves that conscious consumption is the great bane of underdeveloped and developing economies. A luxurious lifestyle doesn’t suit those who are in the Third World. In fact , it doesn’t suit even those who are in the First World because, as Dr. Charles Birch aptly says, “The rich must live more simply so that the poor may simply live.”

Are you tired of keeping up with the Joneses? Are you weary of installment buying, of high rates of inerest, of unending amortizations, of mortgaging your future? The solution is really simple. Give up the economic sham, the affluent false front, the fake rich-glam, and go back to simple living, for “to be simple” as Emerson says “is to be great.”