Chapter Sixty-Five: Live life simply so other may simply live (~jinghan)
Post cards: when you’re in a foreign place you just keep getting drawn to them like a moth to the flame. So I have this stack of postcards sitting on the floor beside my desk (yeah not in my desk, on my desk or even under my desk, but on the floor beside my desk – in my defence, I have no furniture other than a desk and my bed.) And you know, they’re just post cards, some of them I’ll write in (eventually) and some of them I’ll probably stick into a journal (eventually) but this one postcard that I bought at the grocery store somehow keeps coming up in my mind.
I’m not quite sure what the artist intended with the phrase “Live simply so other can simply live” except maybe something that sound charming and will rake in some royalties, I mean will I really improve the quality of someone’s life if I “live simply” as the card suggests? None the less I couldn’t deny that the phrase was somewhat catchy and I found myself repeating it to myself as I do things such as clean the house or shop for groceries or wandering past the public library.
As I’m walking to class I see a stall selling heels set up on campus (by heels I mean heels with the shoe part attached too, but predominantly the heel). Now, there was once a time when I didn’t care about shoes at all. But then social standards required me to learn how to say “Oh, cute shoes!” preferably with some degree of genuine interest. Which of course lead me to thinking “Oh, cute shoes!” as I walk past shop windows. Which lead to me thinking “Oh I think I should have those shoes so people will say ‘Oh, cute shoes’ to me.” And so I’m glancing at some shoes about to think something along those lines when instead what comes to mind is “Live life simply so other can simply live.” I’m not sure how buying shoes will destroy someone’s life, but the point is: the moment of deluded desire is destroyed and I walk on.
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It’s two days before thanksgiving, and I am at bible studies.
“But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” – 1 Timothy 6:6-8
For some reason the thought had never occurred to me before. I was immediately drawn in by the quote, “for we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.” How true and how beautiful. How it makes me feel that the material life I sometimes live is so insignificant, but at the same time by acknowledging this I have so much more capacity to be happy with my life – it seems almost paradoxical and yet hold some great sense of truth.
We watch an excerpt from BBC production Human Planet that tells the story of the women and children of an african tribe must travel across the beak, almost featureless, almost unnavigatable sahara to find a well that is only one metre by one metre big – a mere speck in the scope of the sahara. The women are travelling to trade their camels at market, but if they do not find the well first they and their camels will perish in the heat before they can reach market. All that they have to navigate by is the dune ridges, each looking much like the next. At night the women and children stop to water their camels and to drink sweet tea and talk and teach. No question that their life is a much harsher, perilous life than ours – but could it be that those smiles on their faces show much greater contentment than ours?
Did you know that if you earned $400 in a year you would have a greater annual salary than half the world population? Thats several billion people. Today’s lesson is one on perspective. For what purpose is all those extra hundreds and thousands of dollars we earn for if all we need is food and clothing? Is it true that we sometimes forget what we have by thinking about what we don’t have? Could it even be true that those extra hundreds of thousands of dollars bread more discontent than content? I believe there are some research results that suggest this.
“Live life simply so others may simply live.” I’m still not sure about the logical link of this notion. But certain I feel that there is value in living life simply, but maybe it’s not the others that need to simply live, but ourselves. The tribes people in the Sahara can find contentment and furthermore happiness through a sense of community and full experience of simple joys. By having a good perspective on the reality of survival then they are living to an extent that we privileged modern-society people are completely ignorant of. Maybe it’s not the others that need to simply live but ourselves, maybe it is we who have lost the perspective on what it means to live.
At home I am pampered, I don’t need to think about the reality of where my food comes from or even how it gets cooked. Here I’m often faced with the reality of my milk going off because I bought too much and didn’t drink it fast enough, with how much energy I need to put into cooking at the end of the day when I’m tired and have homework to do, with the need to do my laundry, to look after my fish. It may not sound that amazing, but I feel like I have a lot more perspective on life than I did before, and because of that I am really thankful for my opportunity to be here and see the world in a different way. Even if ironically that meant to go to the USA the richest nation of the world.
Happy thanksgiving.
“But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”