My recent research and self-education of domestic skills lost to the world of consumerism has really had me wondering lately: what led me to the place I am now. And, more importantly, where is my newly learned knowledge going to take me. I spent most of my younger years just being a kid. I don't remember having too much structure and never felt that I was bound into a rigid routine. I had parents who raised me to be in independent thinker. They encouraged me to be a good student, while supporting my artistic endeavors at the same time. I grew up thinking that things should be fixed, not replaced. I also remember more of the activities we did as a family than the "things" we accrued over time.
I don't know how, then, I entered such a materialistic time in my life. It lasted for most of my college life and then onward through adulthood. It wasn't so much that I coveted everything. I did have self-imposed limits. I splurged on things that really mattered to me (or I thought they did at the time) and learned how to work the sales and become a coupon queen. But, buying things on sale still means buying things.
I think I figured I'd just plod along like this until my husband was done with school. We'd pay off our mountain of debt somehow and then I'd figure out how to cut back my hours at work and finally have my sleep schedule back on track. Only, the debt didn't just stay put. It grew. We live frugally...really, we do. I don't buy a lot of extra things that we don't need, but I was still purchasing things.
Then, one day, my husband said to me: "you know, if you don't stop buying things you are never going to be able to stay home with the girls like you want to." I don't mean to say that I didn't already know this...but the redirection of the words really struck home. Instead of focusing on what I would lose if I stopped shopping, he focused on what I would gain. And my mind had never looked at it that way. It was like a bright ray of sunshine streaming through my thoughts. And then, came the rain. I wished I would have thought of this years ago. Before the mountain of debt. Before I knew where I would be now if I had learned another way of living. Before my credit card was filled with finance charges, late fees, and compounding interest.
But, here I am. I've been reading Radical Homemaker by Shannon Hayes this week and I can hardly put it down. She really speaks to me and my new thought process. She describes the phase I have been in for the past few years as "renouncing" and "becoming increasingly aware of the illusory happiness of a consumer society." I'm not sure what started the ball rolling, but I went from just taking the world as it came to me to being able to determine what the ultimate worth of things are and using that to better my surroundings and my life. I started cleaning with "green" cleaners, I learned how to grow things in the great outdoors, and I started to evaluate what I was putting in the mouths of my family. And, now, I am evaluating how much worth my career really has and how much it helps or hinders my life. And the lives of my family.
So, now I've suddenly entered into the "reclaiming" phase that Hayes describes. I am trying to rediscover skills that will allow me to better my life. Unknowingly at first, most of these skills could enable me to live a life of more relaxation and less time spent working. It is an "exciting and tremendously fulfilling period" but I also find it conflicting with my former life. I am still trapped in my need to work. I work for the money to pay off my past, as well as to pay for my present. I know that I could live on less, but in order to live on less, I have to work less. Working less means the loss of conventional health insurance, the need to find a responsible way to pay off debt, and the need for lots of planning. And this planning can't be done until I can already work less. A spinning merry-go-round of choices that I can't seem to jump off quite yet.
So, I hover in the midst of reclaiming my life. Ready to take a jump into a new type of life and ready to do something much more radical to better my life. But, at the same time, I have fears of losing what I always thought was safeguarding my health and security.
But, as psychologists Ed Diener and Shigehiro Oishi say (via Shannon Hayes) "we often misrepresent what will make us happy and unhappy." I am on the way, not to decide what I will have to live without, but to feel "satisfied and fulfilled with what [I] have and jettisoning the burden of excess."
I am on a path that I hope with ultimately help me reclaim my life.
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