Write About Now

Some of my friends choose a theme word each year; it might be an area to focus on, a concept to remember, or a principle to guide decision-making. I like the idea, and I loved Sarah’s choice of “delight” as her theme for 2008, but I’ve never chosen an annual word myself.

Until today. This afternoon I spent several hours with my friend Mildred. She was born in 1916 and, at my request, our conversations include lots of stories from her life. Some of them are fascinating:  her new father-in-law accompanying Mildred and husband Vernon on the first leg of their honeymoon trip, sticking his head out the car window to navigate while Vernon drove through the midwestern dust bowl conditions of 1934; mixing up milk and Karo syrup to make formula for a hungry baby; working for a stock trader when the term referred to livestock instead of investments.

But it was her nonchalant description of daily life during these years that most affected me. “One day Vernon came home and said the haymill where he worked had little two-room houses for the workers, and he got one of those for us,” she said. “We bought a table and four chairs at the second-hand store, and a bed and a mattress and a chest of drawers and a kerosene stove and an oven to put on top. We didn’t have running water—I cooked lunch for the guys every day and whoever got there first had to draw water from the cistern. I heated water on the stove and washed on a board. We got eggs and milk and cream from the animals, and bought some lard and potatoes. Once in a while we got a chicken.”

I don’t want to wash clothes by hand and I’m immensely grateful for hot running water, but as she talked I found myself longing for this uncomplicated life. Mildred and Vernon and their friends worked together, ate lunch together, and celebrated holidays together. There wasn’t much stuff to worry about because there wasn’t much stuff, and people appreciated “little” things—a watermelon, a doll, a few extra cents.

Between the physical labor and the financial worries, I know these were hard times. I don’t mean to romanticize them, and I’m grateful for the many opportunities I have that Mildred could only dream of. But with those opportunities come so many options: dozens of things to learn about, hundreds of books to read, thousands of songs on my iPod, millions of websites to surf—at times it’s overwhelming. Should I stay with Verizon or switch to AT&T and get an iPhone? How many emails can I answer and consider myself caught up for today? What blogs do I need to be reading? How many flights does Southwest have to Orange County, can Laura look in on Louie while I’m gone, I’ll have to remember to buy more milk when I get back, I think Publix had a sale on organic milk this week, I should read that article about which foods to buy organic, I wish I had time to read the paper every day, they say the written newspaper is irrelevant in the internet age, I wonder how that will affect some of the publications I write for, that will probably be on the agenda for the meeting in Florida, I wonder how many flights Southwest has….and on and on it goes.

I have more belongings, more food, more money, and more choices than I need. In a country and a century that values those choices as never before, it seems almost wrong to write that sentence. But this week I’ve stressed out trying to decide what to do with my free time. That’s wrong.

So my 2009 theme is “simplify.” Not the just-back-from-a-mission-trip version that vows to sell everything and live on carrots, or the Target-in-January version that buys Rubbermaid storage containers—my life is already organized (and charitable). Not even the save-a-tree version, although the environment will probably benefit as a result.

Instead, this year I’m going to increase my contentment and gratitude by intentionally limiting my options. Fewer channels, fewer subscriptions. One great purchase instead of three mediocre ones.  Fewer $5 DVDs just because they’re $5 and more listening to the 167 unheard podcasts currently saved on my computer. (You read that right.) Less multitasking and more focus. Less “what if” and more “what is.”

As 2008 slides out of the present and into the filing cabinet, I could categorize it under Stressful or Exhausting. Perhaps Challenging, if you catch me on the right day. Rarely Delightful, and never Simple.

This year that’s going to change. Maybe it’s the frenetic pace I’ve pushed myself into the past four months, but when you start pining for a two-room house with a butter churn, it’s time to slow down.