Lives of Simple Elegance

Here are a few things we can do to achieve them

What does it mean to live a life of elegance?

To me, it means something quite different from what we see paraded before us, posing as what we’re supposed to strive for.

To me, it means a life of integrity, honesty, humility, meaningful relationships, and environmental restoration. It means well-functioning systems, good food for all, adequate and comfortable housing, many shared resources and equanimity.

It means considering the needs of others as well as our own needs. It means embracing altruism and graciousness.

It’s being true to our most authentic selves, and expressing ourselves in whatever way makes sense to each of us. It means being humble, curious and accepting. And it’s deeply non-violent.

It means peaceful relations between family, friends, neighbours and countries, and intentionally articulating the practices and principles that would integrate these values into our shared reality. It’s right relationship across the board.

An elegant world would have robust health, education and transit systems. It would seek ways of helping all people through the various stages of life. It would be both beautifully designed and environmentally friendly. We’d pride ourselves on the functionality and beauty of these systems and the way they enhance all of life.

It means kindness, empathy, common decency and deep, deep healing. Most of us are living the alternative. Is it what we really want? I think it’s past time for something better.

And it means that if we’re wealthy, we seek ways of giving back, and seeing how our existence can contribute to the world becoming a better place.

If we live in the western world, we’re living in a very inelegant system. We have a long way to go, but I think many of us are searching our souls right now, and trying to figure out how to get to a place of living in a truly elegant way.

Most of us are scrambling to make ends meet, and dealing with inadequate societal support systems. We’re experiencing an affordability crisis caused by price gouging.

We’re reaching environmental tipping points and experiencing the consequences. Wildfires, weather events and droughts affect us all. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to let go of all that anxiety in a way that’s reality based?

Despite this, political leaders are saying “drill, baby, drill”.

Billionaires are buying up property as investments, making housing — which is a human right — unaffordable for many. The housing crisis is being blamed inaccurately on immigrants, and not on the rich who are buying up real estate, making it unavailable or unaffordable for the rest of us.

Our economies are in shambles, yet our governments support NATO and endless, pointless wars.

Our governments support Israel as it commits genocide, and those who oppose this are silenced and ignored by our mainstream media, which is owned or highly influenced by the Zionist lobby.

Protesters and journalists who give us accurate information are harassed, arrested, called anti-semitic and even killed for speaking out against this ongoing genocide.

And if foreign affairs isn’t your thing, think about its implications. What’s being tested in Gaza might come to a community near you.

With our governments controlled by billionaires, we get savage capitalism and neoliberal fascism.

Let’s face it: the people who control things in the western world don’t care about making life healthier, more affordable or sustainable. They’re in it for the money.

What do we do as people who want peaceful, healthy and affordable lives for everyone do?

It’s time to reject greed, violence, selfishness and war. Harmony, understanding, sincerity and constructive ideas can take their place. We need to usher in a time of deep and lasting peace and restoration.

As we collectively figure out a strategy, there are a lot of things we can do on the ground to bring this future a little closer.

First and foremost, we can’t buy into the BS the powerful are pushing. Our suffering is not caused by immigrants, women, the gender divergent, or any other group that is being scapegoated. A system that funnels money to the already rich at the expense of everyone and everything else is causing this misery. Period.

The billionaire class is putting all kinds of money into distracting us from what they’re doing: blaming minority groups, supporting fascistic political candidates, whipping up nationalism, supporting wars, and finding ways to glorify people like themselves. Please don’t fall for it. They’re counting on you to be gullible, and we just can’t afford to be.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to get our information from reliable sources. Here are a few sources I trust: Consortium News, Electronic Intifada, the Grayzone, Rachel Blevins.

And let’s do what we can to unplug from this system that has no concern for us or anything of value.

Let’s find ways of supporting each other in getting our basic needs met, and reject the system’s destructive reasoning outright. Find community groups that are helping and support them in whatever way you can.

They say money is power, and we may have limited funds to deal with, but we can use what we have to disempower this brutal system and create something healthy, caring and much, much better.

We can take our money out of the big banks and put it into credit unions or local banks. This keeps our money in our communities and out of the war machine. Often their fees are lower too.

We can save money by buying food in bulk together. I’ve been doing this for years, and do the ordering for myself and others. The company I buy from, Organic Matters, ships to anywhere in the world. And I have a google sheet that tallies orders for myself and others, and then tallies the total. If this interests you, please contact me and I’ll send you a link to the sheet. This supports busy people, and helps us to get short visits in while saving us money.

We can shop second hand, attend clothing exchanges and reuse what’s available. I don’t generally go to big box stores, and I don’t miss them. Big box stores massively funnel money from us and our communities to the very rich.

We can do our best to patronize local businesses only. I’m lucky to live in a region where there are plenty of wonderful locally owned businesses that are widely supported. They support our communities in many ways too.

We can make our own care products. I make my own toothpaste, shampoo, bath salts, and laundry soap. I also make my own tempeh.

The more we do this, the more money we save, the less plastic we consume, the fewer chemicals there are in our lives and the higher the quality of these products, since we know exactly what goes into them. And we withdraw our support for the corporations that produce them.

Here are my recipes:

toothpaste: equal parts baking soda, calcium bentonite clay powder (fine), stevia powder, and I add a sprinkle of cinnamon, but use whatever you like to flavour it. powdered peppermint maybe?

shampoo: 4 parts horsetail (which grows wild in many regions) to 1 part each rosemary, lavender and mallow leaves (which also grows wild in many regions). Steep them in boiling water for 24 hours and then strain. The shampoo doesn’t suds up very much but it cleans and nourishes hair. I also use a bit of coffee to rinse my hair afterwards.

bath salts: 1 part baking soda to 1 part epsom salts. You can add essential oils.

I love my small, elegant bathroom that doesn’t contain gaudy plastic containers of expensive and chemical laden substances. Nothing says “tacky” to me like disposable plastic containers.

laundry soap: to a 5 lb. bucket, grate a bar of hard bar soap and let it dissolve in boiling water. After it has dissolved, add 1 cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup of borax. Fill the 5 lb. bucket with water and stir.

tempeh: boil 1 cup of soy beans. When they’re almost done, but still a little crunchy, remove them from the heat and rinse. In a glass 8” x 8” baking pan, mix the soybeans, 1/4 cup of rice vinegar and a table spoon of rice flour, plus a small piece of crumbled tempeh. Then put a piece of wax paper on top of the pan and poke around 20 holes in it. Put it in the oven with the light on and leave it there for two or three days. It will have grown white and possibly black mould, which is what you want. Any other colour mould means it’s been contaminated, in which case throw it out, wash everything carefully and try it again using a new piece of wax paper. Put your tempeh in a jar and use it as needed. When you make your next batch, use some of that batch to get it started.

We can live in relatively small spaces. They’re easier to maintain, and they force us to part with what we no longer need. Free boxes, yard sales and consignment stores can help to spread them around to those who might need what we don’t.

The concepts I’m talking about aren’t new. Ideas like wabi sabi have been around for centuries. Simplicity, humility, contentment and acceptance are values that many live by. Aren’t they what make for a meaningful life?

We don’t need vulgar ostentatiousness. Nor do we need plastic clutter everywhere. A roof over our heads, good food to eat, functional items, a creative outlet or two, and caring respectful relationships are enough to sustain us.

Maybe the very powerful who are causing so much misery should try this. They might be much happier if they stopped their wars, enacted laws that distributed the wealth more evenly, and designed liveable systems that functioned well while bringing down emissions and restoring our environment.

They’d certainly gain respect in the process. Isn’t that the kind of legacy people want to leave behind them? Imagine the pride their descendants would take in these achievements?

But it’s not easy to change the minds of those who benefit from all this destruction, and I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, we can do what we can to create the elegant society that would be so much more rewarding for all of us.