Rushing to Simplify

Los Angeles, California 

We live in complicated times. There are a lot of emotions swirling around out there: Anger; impatience; irritability, to name a few. Emotions that have always been around but what is different is that there used to be a structure of social decorum that is now lacking, if not utterly missing in action. People say rude things. Politicians say rude things. It has been said that our ex-President (and convicted felon) modeled this behavior which gave agency for people to act in contemptible ways and to say outrageously inappropriate things to each other. Ok, I'll buy that.

I read a lot about the issues impacting us at this time in our history. And I try to come at these subjects via diverse conduits. There are both psychological and sociological explanations, as well as philosophical and faith-based. My brain tends to work in triads, so I try to read articles, and then process the information, from at least three of these viewpoints. Hopefully, most of us have learned that looking at the world through one lens only is dangerous and cult-like. The need for a variety of modalities is vital, especially in this volatile world in which we now reside.

By comparison, I have thought back to the world in which I came of age. I moved out of my parents' home when I was eighteen and two months old, sharing an apartment with my cousin, Caryn, and my best friend, Pam. It was a one-bedroom we furnished with two twin beds in the bedroom and what was known as a 'hollywood' divan, essentially a twin bed against the wall with bolsters. That twin would serve as the sofa in my next three apartments.

By the time I moved into my last apartment, I was in my junior year at university, and was finally able to live alone. I had help. My parents paid for half of my living expenses (rent, utilities) and also financed my auto expenses (gas, repairs and insurance). They funded my tuition and books, which didn't amount to that much at a state university, back in that day. I sometimes wonder why my friends' kids languish at the family home for so long; in some cases into their thirties! We could not wait to get out and be independent. We got our drivers' licenses on our sixteenth birthdays with the specific purpose of driving away from our parents every chance we got! I think part of the foundation of that independence was that we kinda wanted to do things that we could not do under our parents' roof. Our parents had the ability to say no and to hold firm boundaries on our behavior. If we wanted to smoke marajuana and/or sleep with our boy/girlfriends, we had to do it elsewhere. (Note: Drinking we could do with our parents, once we were of age.)

My friends tell me that it is too expensive for their kids to move out. And I understand that. My hourly wage at the first job I held, loading film cassettes in Hollywood, was two dollars an hour. My first rent was $150, split three ways. So I was making $344 gross, and needed to pay $50 for rent. Doable. But my other expenses were utilities and groceries (also split between roommates). No cable, no app subscriptions, no internet, no cell phones, though the cable/internet would also have been split. Can you live without those things? Maybe, but for most of us who are not Amish, probably not.

I have read articles about people who go offline and they generally report a slower and calmer existence. So many of us talk about wanting that slower and calmer life. However, when we are out in the world, we get caught up in all the rushing about. Why is everyone in this rush? Where I live, people cruise through stop signs, sometimes at full speed. Forget the speed limits on streets and the freeway. When Joel and I drive forty-five minutes to a favorite salsa club on early Sunday evenings, we have to get through two freeway interchanges. What we have noticed is that once we are out of the urban landscape and are driving through outlier suburban communities, the freeway madness subsides. For the most part, drivers observe the speed limit and don't swerve in and out of lanes. Do these areas of suburbia promote a slower and calmer existence?

I do believe that one way to have a slower and calmer existence is to simplify. Recently, a newly-retired friend asked me about how I had approached retirement, back about seven years ago. I shared what I thought was valuable information. Reduce appointments. I don't necessarily mean medical appointments, though I think we can do too many of those. But get rid of the people you pay for services that either you can do for yourself, or you don't really need. We all saw people going gray during the pandemic, and many of them decided to not go back to salon-coloring their hair afterwards. As I approached retirement, I decided to let go of a lot of the services I had previously utilized. I stopped getting manicures/pedicures, realizing that the time it took to get this done was better spent, and that doing this for myself, at home, took much less time. No more facials, for the same reason. I let both my insurance and travel agent go, realizing that all the info I needed was easily found online. I stopped using a property manager on my rental properties. And, after the pandemic, I continued cutting my own hair (if you have long hair, this is easy, and the technique for cutting is on you.tube). I still have beauty appointments: I get highlights in my hair. And I can't give myself the regular massages and acupuncture my body needs to support my dancing. But I have cut out a lot of professional services that were costing time and money. And that was a good thing.

I constantly look at my life to see where I can free up time for writing, for dancing. To spend time with Joel and my friends. When my friend, Beth1 (there are three Beths) and I went to see Gone With the Wind recently, I was reminded of the sign displayed on a sundial at the Wilkes' plantation, Twelve Oaks: Do not squander time. It is the stuff of which life is made (paraphrasing, but maybe I nailed it).

So, are all these people rushing around because they are overbooked? I know not; it is a mystery. But rushing they are. And, interestingly, when we dance here in LA, we notice that dancers on the floor are more aggressive than they are when we dance out in the boondocks area of suburbia. Maybe, as someone once pointed out to me, we are living with too many rats in our cage. Those guys start turning on each other when they are crowded together. So, in addition to simplifying, to sussing out more time in a slower and calmer world, we also need to appreciate our need for space. Space in our homes, on the roads, on the dance floors. If time is the stuff life is made of, maybe space is the stuff that affords us the ability to slow down, which in turn might offer us a calmer existence. You can't rush to that. But you can simplify. And that helps. You must trust me about this.