I really enjoy reading this wonderful blog called Penniless Parenting. She blogs from an undisclosed country and (I assume) under a false name, and her writing is on many topics but all under the umbrella of living, as her tag line says, "A rich life on a minimum wage". Penniless Parenting often posts about extreme frugality - living on very little in the way of money or resources. And kudos to her, really; certainly I wouldn't be able to do so with as much grace as she's managed. Recently she published a post on living without a car. Here it is. And here is a quote from it, that I sort of disagree with by the way:
"In order to live without a car, you will have to give up things. You'll have to make compromises. Maybe you end up taking a job that is less ideal, pays less or is in a field you don't enjoy. Maybe you'll live in a neighborhood that you don't like as much. Maybe it means your kids won't be able to do extra curricular activities because you won't be able to drive them from place to place to get there in time. Maybe it means that you won't be able to go on certain trips that aren't accessible by public transportation. It means that you'll have to structure your day to be on time to catch the bus and have to come back before the last bus for the evening. It means that you are more limited in where you can grocery shop and clothes shop and how well you can bargain shop in general, because whatever you buy you need to bring back with you by bus, unless there is delivery."
It's strange to me how people see frugality as the time when you 'give things up', because I really do not think of it as fundementally about this. All of life is sort of about making choices, really. I went to university, but that means I didn't go to college and get started in my career quickly and make lots of money fast. I had three children, but that means I didn't have any other number of children. I didn't stop at one child and make my life pretty straightforward with just one child to think about. I also didn't have a big, vibrant family and guarantee myself lots and lots of weddings and grandkids. I'm happy I didn't NOT have my three children, but there are many other numbers of children I could have had that I did not have, and who knows how I would feel if any of those numbers of children were the amount I had. I have forever 'given up', so to speak, the option of having zero children. But that's life! If I had never had children I would have 'given up' the option of having ten children!
Every meal I eat is also a choice to not be currently eating other food in my house. Every time I go to bed or take a shower is also showing my preference for those activities over other things I could be doing during that time. Did I read this book? I sure did! And also therefore did NOT read any number of other books!
So I suppose that quote bothers me a bit because the emphasis appears to be on the things you are not getting in choosing to not own a car. But this kind of have/have not thinking pattern, while it could exist through all areas of our lives, seems to be greatly focused on the financial side of things. Everything on that list of examples of things you may have to give up is an example, obviously, and I understand that, but all the same I think it puts the whole thing into a negative light. Sort of like it implies 'well you'll save money, but make no mistake, you'll have to make sacrifices and they will be difficult but if you think you can do it, you'll be able to survive on less'.
Here's the thing, maybe not owning a car would be a significant sacrifice for some people. Certainly it would be for me, where I live. And she's right when she says in her post that many people couldn't live without a car because they have structured their lives around a car. That's very true! I live somewhere where I must have a car, because this is where my husband works, and so this is our choice. We could live somewhere else, but then he wouldn't have this job. And I imagine this is what she is trying to get at. But here's another way to think about it:
Right now, my husband has the job he has. He's a minister in a church. And he also doesn't have a vast number of all the other jobs at all the other places in our province, our country, or even the world. He has this one job right here. And the same goes with every other aspect of our lives. We have the electrical company we have, and don't have the others. We own the dining room table we own, and therefore do not own the other dining room tables available. Etc. And all of those decisions together form a snapshot of our life currently. We have THESE children in THIS house with THIS cat and THESE hobbies and THIS brand of milk in the fridge. We don't have another existance, or I suppose you could phrase it that this is our timeline and baring some kind of ability to move between timelines this is the only reality we will ever experience - the outcome of previous decisions. Even our future decisions are influenced by our current reality. I will never have to decide, for example, if I'm going to take that job in Paris because I already made the choice in grade 10 to stop taking French class. That previous decision has removed all sorts of current and future decisions from my sphere.
Rather than experiencing frugality (or poverty, or wealth, or anything financial really) as opening or closing all of these doors in our lives, I think of it as one aspect of an already progressing timeline. I have countless, endless, practically infinite decisions in my life, big and small. And the same goes for everyone. Decisions might be smaller in human scope and understanding but they are never less numerous. Your timeline is as complex and varied as anyone's. True, I might never make a decision that will affect the ruling of a monarchy, or the beginnings of a colony on the moon, or end a war, my decisions may be of a less dramatic cut, but make no mistake, they exist in remarkable variety and number all the same.
So here's the thing with quotes like that. They make it all about the money. They say 'you can live without a car, and here are things you may have to give up, without a car', but with that statement they reduce the idea of your timeline to a one trick pony. If you have a car/money - you get all these things over here...and if you don't have a car/money, then you get to give those things up.
But human lives are so much more complex than that. To give up a car is one decision in a huge web of interconnecting other decisions. Take just the first compromise she mentions:
"Maybe you end up taking a job that is less ideal, pays less or is in a field you don't enjoy."
Or, what if you make the decision to get up earlier and catch the bus? What if you cut down your hours? What if you telecommute? What if you go back to school? What if the zombie apocalypse happens and it doesn't matter? What if you take early retirement? What if you get a better job nearer to your house? What if you carshare? What if you rent a car instead of owning? What if you bike to work? What if it doesn't matter because everyone at your old job disliked you and it is just as well that you left? What if you take unemployment and start a vegetable garden? What if you become a professional gardening consultant? What if you break your ankle planting a garden for the mayor and it doesn't heal properly and you decide to become a Buddhist and in five years you're living in Tibet? And THEN the zombie apocalypse happens?
What I'm trying to say here is It. Doesn't. End. Here. It never does! Maybe you do decide to stop driving and get rid of your car and then you discover you cannot manage the bus commute and you end up quitting and get another job closer to your house and you really hate your new job. Is this all traceable to getting rid of your car and taking the bus? Did that one decision make everything in the future go the way it did? It did not. Your life was full, FULL of a million little decisions that brought you to the day when you looked up from your new job and said "I can't stand this job". And then, is that the end? It is not. Because your full life full of infinite decisions has an infinite number of decisions left to go. Until the day you breathe your last, the decisions, the choices, never end. There is always a choice. Even if the choice is attitude.
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