I Live Well, Just Not Simply, and I'm OK With That

This is my response to this article that everybody is raving about. Feel free to read it, but this is the gist: Stuff doesn't define who you are, so we should all sell all of our stuff and become hobos because people who do that are the best people in the world and the only people who "get" it. But you will probably never be able to do it because you're too tied down and have bought too much into the modern world and aren't as cool as the author.

I agree with the idea that “neither self nor wealth can be measured in terms of what you consume or own,” but I don’t agree with the attitude that vagabonding is the search for something simple or that “simple” is really all that desirable or that getting rid of all your stuff will help you live better. I resist simple; I hate simple. If my life were simple, I’d be bored to death.

As a response to the “vagabonding” lifestyle so espoused by young faux-philosophical travelers, the best way to live simply and be as sustainable as possible is, in fact, NOT to vagabond at all, but find a quiet little corner of the world and start your own sustainable farm, which becomes a small sustainable community, from which you never go walkabout. Driving cross country or riding on our unarguably inefficient trains and buses or flying on airplanes or leaving your tiny town at all is neither sustainable NOR simple. Just because you don’t go on useless shopping sprees and can carry your belongings in your backpack doesn’t mean you aren’t over-consuming resources.

People have been using the “be simple” philosophies of the non-modern (and often non-Western) world as an excuse to jet off and become nomadic for decades now. But this interpretation is a warping of the original meaning of these ideas. They didn’t mean for affluent white Americans to consume jet fuel and live off the kindness of strangers who are without a doubt poorer than those Americans could ever hope to be. In truth, those philosophies beg for us to stop traveling, stop moving, stop searching, and be happy with the here and now, to be complete and sustained in our own homes and families. They search for a small, energy-efficient home with its own garden and a solid community that can provide its members with every necessity without any of them ever leaving.

All too often, the books I read about people’s adventures around the world are full of condescending views of other Americans who don’t do the same and the ignorant and arrogant (hypo)critical eschewing of the very lifestyles, economics and politics that make their vagabond lifestyle possible. Despite what the bloggers like to say, I have never met a single person who sustains constant travel (vagabonding) who doesn’t have some kind of money. Whether from an old corner-office job, a great divorce strategy, a few years of working all the time and saving every penny, a best-selling book (which the author LOVES to forget to mention), or a really swell uncle, there’s always a bank account somewhere whose doors are open for business. Those who say otherwise are selling something, whether their own image and reputation, a product, or a lie.

And there is also a flawed American notion that “stuff” is equal to “complicated” and “no stuff” is equal to “simple.” Those who desire to criticize the disgusting consumer-driven frenzy that is the Western World (no argument from me there) pick the easiest (simplest?) aspect as a scapegoat at which to throw their un-researched tirades against The Man. But there are plenty of people in the world without any stuff at all whose lives are inextricably complicated. There are people who have stuff who keep things simple. And there are plenty of people with not a lot of stuff who enjoy the complicated. I fall into the latter category.

I am one of those who “lives well” without being an ascetic. I travel a lot and often on a whim, I drink good beer, I have a great time. I eat good food, I eat bad food, I eat street food. I meet great people and hang out in some of the most interesting places in the world. I also own a house, a dining room table, a car, several bookshelves, and a Wii, and I recently redid the inside of my house. But I try to be conscience about stuff that I “need” versus stuff that I “want.” I make sacrifices: my car is old and not an SUV (gasp!) with 150,000 miles on it, but I’m not getting a new one; my house is small and we don't own a camper or an ATV or a snowmobile. We live in a place with a relatively low cost of living, which also means the nearest Target is 2 ½ hours away. I also stick to grocery lists and generic brand foods.

I love complicated. And according to so many “backpackers” and “vagabonds” and “travelers,” this must make me one of droves, the worker bees whose lives must be miserable because I have stuff. I, for one, am offended at such an affront, that these people who make a life of irresponsibility (which is fine with me, I don’t judge) feel that they can pass judgment on how I live because I respect my job and my husband and my life, just differently. They may feel superior shitting behind a bush and not showering for days at a time, but how many of them can return to a place they love and own and in which they are happy and comfortable whenever they need a break? I can do both, and I can slide between the two extremes with an ease these people will never know. I am also unburdened by the weight of the superiority and arrogance of either.

Some people genuinely enjoy having responsibility and a job they love and feeling as if they were part of something significant. Fulfillment for them isn’t a life of listless nomadism; to them, feeling “alive” and experiencing something real is a job well done, successfully negotiating a conservation easement contract, successfully establishing an experiment in community-based ecotourism, successfully diffusing a volatile political situation. Does this make them bad people, unhappy people, consumer-driven people, unsustainable people, unfulfilled people? Why does “living well” have to be living On The Road? Why does “living well” have to be simple at all?
I love adventure, which should never be simple. And though you may not carry a lot of “stuff” with you when you travel, travel should rarely be simple.

And in the vagabonding world, poor and underdeveloped is considered the model of simple. Entire droves of backpackers are taking complete advantage of the developing world because of its extreme poverty, immediately criticizing a place as “too commercial,” “too rich,” and “too globalized“as soon as the people in these places raise their standard of living to internationally acceptable levels (read: when most people don’t die of malaria and intestinal parasites anymore). To today’s vagabonds, getting a “real” local experience has become synonymous with keeping poor people poor for travelers’ enjoyment, and antithetical to providing necessary health care, education, and infrastructure. This “poor” experience isn’t always the genuine one young, privileged Americans pretend it to be. Backpackers snub anything that isn’t a hostel or a piece of street food, talking about the genuine and the real, all the while missing out on what could possibly be another, just as REAL cultural experience: the middle class, or hell, the upper class, or all classes. Having a little bit of money to spend on a movie or a funky dinner or some of the local brew doesn’t make people any less real or any less a part of their own culture, and it’s arrogant for comparatively rich (no matter how little money they have) white Americans to think they have the know-how to decide what another culture is all about.

Instead of the intellectual pursuit of existentialism, I find modern, Western nomadism to be the pursuit of demonstrated superiority. Bloggers and novelists who write about how great their lives are now that they’ve ditched their possessions and their connections in exchange for living a better life than you, but a life that you could never follow because they are just too advanced, are “simply” trying to feed their own egos with your envy. And that doesn’t seem very “living well” to me.