Simply Less

I swing myself onto my bicycle, pressing soft flip-flops against hard pedals, sweet music in my ears. The hot summer sun on my neck makes me pedal slowly, lazily, noiselessly. And a smile spreads across my warmed face.

I’m taking a break from air-conditioning and my apartment - I’ve spent all day getting rid of clutter, making it lighter until now it feels like it could lift off, with me in it, into a brighter future, instead of heavy, like it’s about to sink into the ground and bury me with it. A ready-made tomb.

I’m making life simple. Light. After a year that saw a divorce and a pandemic, I need my future to be like this. Sustainable. I want to know I can survive, whatever happens. I want to be light, nimble, able to pivot. Ready to move.

When you start to live like this, things dove-tail. Cause and effect. One thing leading to another. When I simplify, life is simple.

I sold my house to rent this apartment. I no longer spend weekends mowing a lawn because a neighbor oozes judgment, or rake leaves into plastic bags every fall, or worry about the furnace lasting the winter, or whether the eavestrough is blocked, or god knows what other gerbil-wheel-waste-of-my-time-here-on-earth worries I used to have.

I sold my car, too. Hence the bicycle. So I don’t have to pay to run on a treadmill, or ride a stationary bike in a gym. So I don’t have to find money for a five-year membership, or worry about gyms closing down for, well…you know.

I don’t have a car, so I don’t have the running costs, the insurance, repair costs, the fuel costs of a car. I don’t have to pay for parking. I dont have pay someone to clear my driveway in the winter.

Because I ride or walk everywhere, I don’t need a personal fitness coach or a diet plan.

Like a cold shower, a down-hill free-wheel in a freezing Canadian winter can remind you that you are still very much alive. The bare minimalism of that feeling makes you grateful for just being. Just being. So I tend to feel happier, more rested and more ready for a good night’s sleep. So I gave up therapy.

I gave up my job as a teacher to become a writer. O.K., maybe I’ll go back to therapy. But still, it gives me more freedom, and more potential income streams. Emphasis on potential. But still, I’m following my heart. My dreams. You can’t get any more simple and sustainable than that. And my time is my own. Sometimes I just sit in the park and look at the lake. This might be sad. I’m not sure.

For over-all, full-body fitness, for a fraction of the money I save from not having a car, I bought a three-month subscription to a fitness app that leads me through progressive workouts, which I set to no more than 30 minutes a day. I can work out anywhere. I’m not working long hours to afford a gym membership that I’m too tired to use, or can’t get to. If we go into lockdown again I can work out, do yoga, work, all in an apartment that feels like it’s lifting me up.

I bought a wallet. It’s small and compact and it doesn’t bulk out my pocket, and you know what, it makes me feel more in charge of my finances. Really. It works.

I streamlined my direct debits. I learned two yoga routines off by heart and I do those. No more expensive monthly app payments. I might try the same with my work-out app, but right now I need the support. You have to pick your battles. This isn’t always about having less.

Yesterday I bought a pump that fits my own bike and my daughter’s. It’s small and well-made. It blows out air even when you pull it out, and it fits with my values. I gave away my old, bulky, one-dimensional pump, because it doesn’t do either of those things. This whole thing is like a value system. Hey, that word is really close to valve! Value. Valve. I think there something in that.

Maybe not.

The same goes for food. I buy organic veg but I batch cook to save money - and time. When I remember. I’m not perfect.

I am curating myself, choosing the books I want to keep around, the clothes that help me to feel a certain way. (I fought against this for a long time, “why should clothes define me?” But now I think of it as manifesting the guy I want to be. Clothes maketh the man.)

I feel liberated, lighter, more focused. When I get it right, I feel as though I am leaving a light footprint, and yet I feel so much richer, so much more here. In time, in health, in clarity, I am growing. I feel streamlined, go-faster, stealthy. Like I can roll with the punches, run like the wind, dodge the rain. I feel light and full of light. So I can spread the light.

I’m lucky, I know. I am safe, healthy, relatively affluent. I was pretty much born into those things.

I am writing this on a laptop, I have quality, noise-canceling headphones, and the ability to write in a cafe (well, before…you know.) I have a nice bicycle that I call Champ. These things I have chosen, yes, but I am lucky to have had those choices.

A divorce, a real need to start again, to be unencumbered, to go back to basics, back to me, all informed this life-style that speaks to values and beliefs that I had let slip - much more than a big house in the suburbs ever did.

But what if this is negotiation? Me making the best of things? Maybe it is. But it sure feels right. And when I’m being really me, I have clarity. I feel a faith that good things will happen. That if I’m authentically, simply, powerfully me, I will attract more things. But sustainable things. Like a loving partner. Like making money doing what I love to do.

What if I am trying to control life too much, make it small. What if I’m trying to control the chaos that is necessary for creation and a new order, fresh growth? But I’m not looking to stifle the kind of unknown that can lead me to new shores. You can’t set sail if you are weighed down, either. I want to cast off the ballast and let the wind unfurl my mainsheet.

What if I’m becoming a “weird loner in the woods”? I sometimes think. Or worse, a privileged hipster fool. But I don’t want to live off the grid: I would be dead in a week, a hammer in one hand, a nail in the other and a confused look on my face. I do want to make choices that fit me, that are not foisted on me by “normality”. And I understand I’m not changing the world by biking to the store or choosing artisanal bread.

And I try hard not to judge other’s choices. I really do.

I’m just finally being honest about what I need in my life. And honesty is sustainable.

Sometimes this life-style choice is frowned upon, or even pitied. Renting is especially looked down upon in north American society - it is almost a symbol of failure. Like it’s fiscally irresponsible for me not to go into huge debt to a bank. The lack of perceived safety or permanence (perceived being the key word there) isn’t for everyone. Some people like a castle and a drawbridge. I get it. This is the path I took. I can’t escape the all-consuming system, but I don’t have to follow a set of unwritten rules either.

I don’t want to tell the universe, my subconscious, God, whatever word you want to use, that I don’t deserve abundance. Just that abundance hardly ever means “more”. These are choices, not unfortunate accidents.

I’m often run off the road, deliberately or carelessly, looked at as a second class citizen for riding a bicycle. The dread of leaving my heated kitchen in the Canadian winter to cycle anywhere, the frozen phone battery, the layers of technical clothing, the cruel crunch of winter tires on packed snow until I get going and feel the warmth to remind me that I’m alive. It isn’t so easy then, but it’s still worth it. I’m glad I made this choice. It’s not “less than” for me to bike to work in the winter instead of guzzling gas, as pitying faces suggest when they offer me rides. It is a choice. And I know that if I dont make that choice, I’m not living a sustainable way of life.

Like a boxer, I’m staying at my fighting weight, literally and metaphorically. Lean, wiry, agile.

It isn’t always easy though. I tried to grow my own veg. Once.

Subconsciously, my criteria have become quality, authenticity, and sustainability. Can it move with me, move me, keep me grounded and also lift me up? I’m a Swiss army knife, a Swiss watch. Something Swiss.

The rest? I can do without.

I want my life to get bigger in all the right ways.

By having less, I’m making room for more.

Are you in?