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.
Showing posts with label Responses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Responses. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Saturday, October 12, 2019
But...that's not what that means, and other surface theology
Almost nothing riles me up more than people taking small snippets of a faith, reading them entirely out of context, and building a theological understanding out of them. It's so aggravating. Not just for me, but I imagine also for THEM, because the weird frankenfaith they've come up with is not equipped to handle anything beyond the most basic of problems. There's no depth! What are you doing with your pain? How are you handling your difficult times in life? What about horrible things? What about wonderful things? How do you answer your questions and live your LIFE???
Take this glorious example of ridiculous:
It's from Facebook, which is obviously the best theological tool out there. That being said, how on earth...what is this meme ABOUT? So we've got a person giving another person soup. Well golly, that's super nice of them. Or maybe it's gruel. Well, whatever - the point is I'm assuming Guy #2 is going to eat this. Food is being passed around. How lovely. Now, we have two verses, separated for emphatic purposes by this picture. Let's take a look at those.
Verse #1 - Jesus doesn't care how many Bible verses you have memorized.
Well, firstly, Jesus was an actual real, live, historical figure living in a real, actual, historical period of time, so he had a life, and his life was...Jewish. Because he was Jewish. He also wasn't white, but maybe that first arm is supposed to be you passing gruel to someone and not him, so I guess if you're white this picture would work. Or if you had any gruel handy. But if Jesus was Jewish, then the real, live, historical Jesus would have had opinions from the perspective of...a Jewish man. So yeah, actually we have a lot of information available to us about historical Jewish men in the middle east, and based on that information, Jesus would have certainly cared if you memorized scripture. Absolutely he would have. He did it himself! He did it so well he taught in the temple! He did it so well he taught senior scholars in the temple while he was a child! He had such a firm grasp of scripture that he developed a following and became a serious threat and was killed for it! And what's more, the scriptures he had access to were the Old Testament teachings, not the New Testament teachings, so in fact he would have expected a decent understanding of the things LEADING UP TO the gospel accounts. He would, in short, have expected historical faith knowledge. But don't take my word for this - ask literally any credible Jewish scholar anywhere about the importance of Old Testament knowledge to their faith. Any. One.
But maybe what the meme is trying to say is not so much 'Jesus' but 'The Holy Spirit'. That's a pretty major error if that's the case, seeing as Jesus is not the Holy Spirit because they are two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TRIUNE ASPECTS OF GOD. It would be like saying 'Listen, Debbie, I know you wrote this essay but I'm going to say Susan did because you're both human females so, like, you're pretty much interchangeable'. This would be incorrect. And I want to say that whoever wrote the above piece of drivel doesn't actually believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the same person but sure, let's, for just a moment, pretend that that's the problem.
So here is where I feel like a little Bible lesson would not be remiss. See, Jesus DIED. Like, he ACTUALLY FOR REALSIES DIED. So now Jesus is dead, okay? He's put into a tomb and he's still dead, bear with me. Now, he COMES BACK TO LIFE. Oh my gosh really, I know, it's shocking. I'm not being sarcastic - this is shocking news. It's so shocking that it literally actually changed the course of human history. Now, what happens NEXT? I mean, does he live a nice long life and then die again? Does he start a religion called Christianity? Does he overthrow the government like everyone seemed to hope he would? Surprisingly, he spends time with various people, talks to them, hangs out, and then...he goes to Heaven! So sometime approximately two thousand years ago Jesus goes up to Heaven, and...he hasn't come back yet. Really! He's still there! Well, now that is crazy because these days you have lots and lots of things attributed TO Jesus that Jesus is not here to do. Like, for example, caring about whether you, Susan, are memorizing your Old Testament! But Jesus is not physically here, on Earth, because you remember he went to heaven and that is where he still is.
The person who IS here is the Holy Spirit. Who is actually, tangibly HERE here. No, you can't see him, he isn't in a human body like Jesus was, but he's here all the same. So we know the Holy Spirit is here because 1) Jesus told us he would be here and 2) We can see the results of his arrival. Like...like air. You can't see air, but you're breathing, and you're alive, and fire works, and something is moving those leaves, and so forth. You can't SEE air, but you can see the results of air existing. So you can see that Jesus and the Holy Spirit, while both being God (God is an eternal, unchangeable spirit who is triune in nature. Triune meaning 'three-in-one' One God. Three persons. Three aspects. Three separate aspects. One God. You'll easily able to tell why I am not a theologian.) are not The Same Thing. Not. Not the same thing at ALLLLLLL. Very different in multiple ways. In form, in purpose, in location for that matter. Remember, Holy Spirit - here, with us. Jesus - Still in Heaven, hasn't returned yet.
So what if what the meme is trying to say is that the Holy Spirit doesn't care how many Bible verses you have memorized. Well, if anything, this is possibly more ridiculous than Jesus not caring. What we need to ask ourselves is WHY. Why would Jesus send us the Holy Spirit? Why bother? I mean, if the whole purpose of the Bible is entirely fulfilled by God the father creating us and God the son redeeming us then what's this invisible Spirit guy doing in the mix? Well, he's there for multiple reasons but one of them is GUIDANCE. So I'm terrible at examples but try and follow my poor storytelling. You want to go somewhere, so you get in a car. There's a road and it has lots of signs and everything guiding you to the place you want to go. But signs and a road and a car are not enough to get from place A to place B. What if part of the road gets washed out? What if you make a turn off the road because you think you know a better way but it turns out you navigate like I do and you do not, in fact, know a better way? What if the windshield wipers suddenly turn on and you can't get it to stop and you don't know what's wrong with the car? Wouldn't it be handy if there was someone in the passenger seat who knew this road really, really well? Who was part of the BUILDING of this road? Who personally lived both at point A and also at point B and could navigate for you? Well lucky for you, there is! This is the Holy Spirit's JOB. He specifically wants to help guide you along that road and all it's myriad twists, turns, wrong ways, detours and crazy oncoming traffic. What does this have to do with this meme, woman!!!?? I'll tell you - the Holy Spirit wants to guide you. His purpose in existing is primarily to be the guiding helper. He will guide you despite whatever stupid stuff you may do, and thank God for that, frankly, but all the same he wants you to travel down this path. He WANTS you to move towards Point B. He exists in you to help you get closer to the end point! This is what he does! Do you think, knowing this, that he would not want you to deeply know your guidebook? That he would say "hey, we're on this highway, but don't look at the road signs. Or learn how to drive the car. Or read the owner's manual." Does this sound in any way logical? It does not.
So okay, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (and God the father as well but I'm hoping I don't need to explain that) all do, actually want you to know your Bible. All three of them are deeply invested in you knowing your Bible, in fact.
Verse #2 - He cares how you treat people.
Right. Well, yeeeees, he does care how you treat people. Yes. But that is not really in any way affiliated with how much of the Bible you know. I mean, those two things, if they are in any way attached to each other, actually feed positively from the Bible reading side. So if you read your Bible and know your Bible and study your Bible you will treat people BETTER because of that, not worse. No one is asking you to choose. No one is saying you can EITHER know your Bible OR you can treat people well. But you only get to pick one of those things. That's...I don't even know where that would come from. Absolutely none of the Bible is about choosing between living in this actual world that God has created, and being a Good Christian. I cannot even think where this dichotomy would come from, and I'm wracking my brains.
Perhaps what the implication here is is less that you're choosing, but that the sort of person who would memorize Bible verses is not the sort of person who would care how you treat people. That's quite possible, actually, since the world seems to have this fascinatingly strange perception of Christians as weirdos just waiting to leap out of dark corners and throw Gideon testaments at innocent people just trying to have a nice time. I don't even own a Gideon testament! Or a long denim skirt! Obviously someone should be taking away my Christian card.
The irony is that IF that is what this meme is trying to get at, that you can give away bowls of gruel to hairy armed poor hungry people OR you can be all worried about stupid stuff like learning the basis of faith and salvation, then this meme curls in on itself and becomes what it condemns. It takes its truth, and it hold it above all else, and says 'prostrate yourself in front of this, and not that. That is wrong, but this...this over here, this social justice, this feeding of people, this is right!' It ignores the two thousand years where for large swathes of time the Western world owed it's learning and medical care and allievment of poverty to the Christians. It ignores the Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots flying food to drought-ridden areas of Angola, right now! It ignores the Wycliffe Bible translators who gave me brand new lovely snowsuits for my two oldest children when we were too poor to manage much on our own. It ignores the elderly in my own church, who from there own meagre income buy food for the children at the small local elementary school here in town, so that no child has to go through the day without breakfast and lunch. These people, they did not ignore their responsibility to their own faith, to read the road signs, to learn about the car, in favour of the easier visible things. They didn't give the box of cereal and then go home and say 'well thank goodness that's done and I don't have to even LISTEN in church next week.' The study was the fuel that led them forward.
And the Bible, strangely enough, has quite a bit to say about that, too.
Take this glorious example of ridiculous:
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| Taken from the Mindful Christianity Today facebook page - I don't know where they got it from. |
Verse #1 - Jesus doesn't care how many Bible verses you have memorized.
Well, firstly, Jesus was an actual real, live, historical figure living in a real, actual, historical period of time, so he had a life, and his life was...Jewish. Because he was Jewish. He also wasn't white, but maybe that first arm is supposed to be you passing gruel to someone and not him, so I guess if you're white this picture would work. Or if you had any gruel handy. But if Jesus was Jewish, then the real, live, historical Jesus would have had opinions from the perspective of...a Jewish man. So yeah, actually we have a lot of information available to us about historical Jewish men in the middle east, and based on that information, Jesus would have certainly cared if you memorized scripture. Absolutely he would have. He did it himself! He did it so well he taught in the temple! He did it so well he taught senior scholars in the temple while he was a child! He had such a firm grasp of scripture that he developed a following and became a serious threat and was killed for it! And what's more, the scriptures he had access to were the Old Testament teachings, not the New Testament teachings, so in fact he would have expected a decent understanding of the things LEADING UP TO the gospel accounts. He would, in short, have expected historical faith knowledge. But don't take my word for this - ask literally any credible Jewish scholar anywhere about the importance of Old Testament knowledge to their faith. Any. One.
But maybe what the meme is trying to say is not so much 'Jesus' but 'The Holy Spirit'. That's a pretty major error if that's the case, seeing as Jesus is not the Holy Spirit because they are two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TRIUNE ASPECTS OF GOD. It would be like saying 'Listen, Debbie, I know you wrote this essay but I'm going to say Susan did because you're both human females so, like, you're pretty much interchangeable'. This would be incorrect. And I want to say that whoever wrote the above piece of drivel doesn't actually believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the same person but sure, let's, for just a moment, pretend that that's the problem.
So here is where I feel like a little Bible lesson would not be remiss. See, Jesus DIED. Like, he ACTUALLY FOR REALSIES DIED. So now Jesus is dead, okay? He's put into a tomb and he's still dead, bear with me. Now, he COMES BACK TO LIFE. Oh my gosh really, I know, it's shocking. I'm not being sarcastic - this is shocking news. It's so shocking that it literally actually changed the course of human history. Now, what happens NEXT? I mean, does he live a nice long life and then die again? Does he start a religion called Christianity? Does he overthrow the government like everyone seemed to hope he would? Surprisingly, he spends time with various people, talks to them, hangs out, and then...he goes to Heaven! So sometime approximately two thousand years ago Jesus goes up to Heaven, and...he hasn't come back yet. Really! He's still there! Well, now that is crazy because these days you have lots and lots of things attributed TO Jesus that Jesus is not here to do. Like, for example, caring about whether you, Susan, are memorizing your Old Testament! But Jesus is not physically here, on Earth, because you remember he went to heaven and that is where he still is.
The person who IS here is the Holy Spirit. Who is actually, tangibly HERE here. No, you can't see him, he isn't in a human body like Jesus was, but he's here all the same. So we know the Holy Spirit is here because 1) Jesus told us he would be here and 2) We can see the results of his arrival. Like...like air. You can't see air, but you're breathing, and you're alive, and fire works, and something is moving those leaves, and so forth. You can't SEE air, but you can see the results of air existing. So you can see that Jesus and the Holy Spirit, while both being God (God is an eternal, unchangeable spirit who is triune in nature. Triune meaning 'three-in-one' One God. Three persons. Three aspects. Three separate aspects. One God. You'll easily able to tell why I am not a theologian.) are not The Same Thing. Not. Not the same thing at ALLLLLLL. Very different in multiple ways. In form, in purpose, in location for that matter. Remember, Holy Spirit - here, with us. Jesus - Still in Heaven, hasn't returned yet.
So what if what the meme is trying to say is that the Holy Spirit doesn't care how many Bible verses you have memorized. Well, if anything, this is possibly more ridiculous than Jesus not caring. What we need to ask ourselves is WHY. Why would Jesus send us the Holy Spirit? Why bother? I mean, if the whole purpose of the Bible is entirely fulfilled by God the father creating us and God the son redeeming us then what's this invisible Spirit guy doing in the mix? Well, he's there for multiple reasons but one of them is GUIDANCE. So I'm terrible at examples but try and follow my poor storytelling. You want to go somewhere, so you get in a car. There's a road and it has lots of signs and everything guiding you to the place you want to go. But signs and a road and a car are not enough to get from place A to place B. What if part of the road gets washed out? What if you make a turn off the road because you think you know a better way but it turns out you navigate like I do and you do not, in fact, know a better way? What if the windshield wipers suddenly turn on and you can't get it to stop and you don't know what's wrong with the car? Wouldn't it be handy if there was someone in the passenger seat who knew this road really, really well? Who was part of the BUILDING of this road? Who personally lived both at point A and also at point B and could navigate for you? Well lucky for you, there is! This is the Holy Spirit's JOB. He specifically wants to help guide you along that road and all it's myriad twists, turns, wrong ways, detours and crazy oncoming traffic. What does this have to do with this meme, woman!!!?? I'll tell you - the Holy Spirit wants to guide you. His purpose in existing is primarily to be the guiding helper. He will guide you despite whatever stupid stuff you may do, and thank God for that, frankly, but all the same he wants you to travel down this path. He WANTS you to move towards Point B. He exists in you to help you get closer to the end point! This is what he does! Do you think, knowing this, that he would not want you to deeply know your guidebook? That he would say "hey, we're on this highway, but don't look at the road signs. Or learn how to drive the car. Or read the owner's manual." Does this sound in any way logical? It does not.
So okay, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (and God the father as well but I'm hoping I don't need to explain that) all do, actually want you to know your Bible. All three of them are deeply invested in you knowing your Bible, in fact.
Verse #2 - He cares how you treat people.
Right. Well, yeeeees, he does care how you treat people. Yes. But that is not really in any way affiliated with how much of the Bible you know. I mean, those two things, if they are in any way attached to each other, actually feed positively from the Bible reading side. So if you read your Bible and know your Bible and study your Bible you will treat people BETTER because of that, not worse. No one is asking you to choose. No one is saying you can EITHER know your Bible OR you can treat people well. But you only get to pick one of those things. That's...I don't even know where that would come from. Absolutely none of the Bible is about choosing between living in this actual world that God has created, and being a Good Christian. I cannot even think where this dichotomy would come from, and I'm wracking my brains.
Perhaps what the implication here is is less that you're choosing, but that the sort of person who would memorize Bible verses is not the sort of person who would care how you treat people. That's quite possible, actually, since the world seems to have this fascinatingly strange perception of Christians as weirdos just waiting to leap out of dark corners and throw Gideon testaments at innocent people just trying to have a nice time. I don't even own a Gideon testament! Or a long denim skirt! Obviously someone should be taking away my Christian card.
The irony is that IF that is what this meme is trying to get at, that you can give away bowls of gruel to hairy armed poor hungry people OR you can be all worried about stupid stuff like learning the basis of faith and salvation, then this meme curls in on itself and becomes what it condemns. It takes its truth, and it hold it above all else, and says 'prostrate yourself in front of this, and not that. That is wrong, but this...this over here, this social justice, this feeding of people, this is right!' It ignores the two thousand years where for large swathes of time the Western world owed it's learning and medical care and allievment of poverty to the Christians. It ignores the Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots flying food to drought-ridden areas of Angola, right now! It ignores the Wycliffe Bible translators who gave me brand new lovely snowsuits for my two oldest children when we were too poor to manage much on our own. It ignores the elderly in my own church, who from there own meagre income buy food for the children at the small local elementary school here in town, so that no child has to go through the day without breakfast and lunch. These people, they did not ignore their responsibility to their own faith, to read the road signs, to learn about the car, in favour of the easier visible things. They didn't give the box of cereal and then go home and say 'well thank goodness that's done and I don't have to even LISTEN in church next week.' The study was the fuel that led them forward.
And the Bible, strangely enough, has quite a bit to say about that, too.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Thoughts about rich/poor city/country dynamics.
I mentioned in a previous post about how we used to live in a big city, and then we moved to an even bigger city, and then we moved to a small town, and now we live in an even smaller, tiny village of 600 people. Mostly in that post I wanted to hash out my own thoughts about why I preferred city living to rural living (and by rural I am including the predominantly agricultural based economies of the towns I have lived in, not just off-in-the-bush type living). But actually there are other urban/rural dynamics that have occurred to me over the years that I think put me in a minority. There are a lot of assumptions made about urban living or rural living that, just from a personal perspective, have not rung true for me. One of these is...
The city is expensive. The country is cheaper.
The area where housing costs really seem to show a big disparity is if you are buying a house, which we haven't done anywhere we've lived. In the areas we've lived in, in the country you can get a lot more house for your dollar than in the city. That being said, some cities cost half a million just to break into the housing market, while others have houses half that price, and depending on where you look and what you want in a place, the country can often cost nearly what the city costs. But I would say it's accurate to state that generally, in a set locale, the equivalent house in both the country and the city would show an increase in value in the city.
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| image from The Graphics Fairy |
Now, in some ways, yes, the city is more expensive and the country is cheaper. In some ways. But a lot of it depends on your lifestyle and despite the fact that most of my opinion is anecdote based, I am still going to share it.
So, when we lived in the second Big City, a city of multiple-millions of people, we had a small, one bedroom apartment. We were newly married, two cats, no children, and it worked for us. The apartment, like all apartments, had positives and negatives. It was small, and older, damp and not well lit, but it was in a great location in a shared house with the landlord who was lovely. It had a good sized walk out to the back yard, which we also had access to whenever we wished. The landlord was prompt and efficient, we didn't have a car but the apartment came with parking if we had guests over, we were close to public transit, and nearby were several grocery stores and so forth all within easy walking distance. There were no laundry facilities on site, but there was a laundromat about 5 minutes away and without children to make it challenging we didn't mind going and sitting beside our washing for an hour with a book and a coffee from the local shop. We walked to the library, which was big and well stocked, and to our church, both within a maximum of 20-30 minutes at a meandering stroll. The apartment was not, don't get me wrong, a great apartment. But it was an okay apartment in a great neighbourhood.
We moved from the Great Big City to the first smaller town. That town had approximately 4000 people. We moved into, again, an apartment. And again, this apartment had pluses and minuses. It was better lit and it was bigger. There were small windows around the house but the front living room window was nice and big. All of the rooms were larger in size and there were more of them - there were two bedrooms in this apartment plus a third room used as storage. This extra room was important for our family because this is the apartment we brought our first child home to. It also had hook-ups for a washer and dryer, though we didn't have a dryer at that point. From a negative view, though, the apartment didn't have a yard, it had a very awkward layout and also ancient carpeting and therefore a problem with mold. Although the apartment was bigger, the neighbourhood was not as nice, the neighbours were not as nice, and the walk to access our church and grocery shopping was long.
What you may find interesting is that those two apartments were the same price.
The smaller apartment in the big city in a nice neighbourhood close to everything, and the bigger apartment in the small town in a not nice neighbourhood far from a lot of stuff. For us, there was no price difference in our rent, although when it came to utilities, we did see a marked difference - the bigger apartment was heated with electric baseboard heating and the price to keep it warm was astronomical - several times the heating cost of the small, better insulated city apartment.
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| Image from The Graphics Fairy |
In the two cities we've lived in, we've had access to public transit and not kept a car for that reason. In the small town we lived in we didn't have a car either, and found it a challenge. In the tiny village where we live now we have always had a car and frankly would have trouble surviving without one.
I've heard people say that the cost of yearly public transit is close to the cost of maintaining a car but I can't possibly see how that could be true. Once you factor in maintenance, gas, insurance, and any sort of upgrades, even if you do a lot of this yourself, it is significantly more to own a vehicle. I took the opportunity to look up the prices of a year's worth of monthly unlimited ride passes in three Canadian cities. Here you go:
In Toronto, Canada's largest city, an adult could have a monthly pass for $151.15. The total for the year would be $1813.80.
In Vancouver, the cost is $177.00 a month, or $2124.00 a year.
In Ottawa, $116.50 will get you unlimited monthly fares, or $1398.00 a year.
This is just the most expensive, regular adult fare. If you qualified for any other sort of discount - low income, senior, student, etc., then obviously your fare would be lower. At least one of the cities also offered a discount in the monthly pass fare if you bought the year's worth of passes at one time. Even in the most expensive of these cities (and these are three sizable Canadian cities, with populations of 2.93 million, 675,218, and 994,837 respectively), the cost of keeping a vehicle would drastically outweigh the cost of a year's worth of unlimited rides. This is true right up through getting multiple unlimited ride passes, at least for us it would be. Gas where we live is a lot more than in Southern Canadian cities, and our grocery store is a 90 minute round trip away. If we travelled into the city 2.5 times in a week, we would need to refill the car, and at our local gas prices, that would be half the price of that monthly bus pass right there.
Now in terms of food and household supplies, I've found the price differences to be a mixed bag. When we lived out on the East coast of Canada, the cost of 4L of milk was close to $8. Here in central Canada, the cost of 4L of milk is under $4. In fact, almost everything was more expensive out there! I have found when buying stuff that the city is almost universally cheaper than the country and I assume the reason behind this is the simple fact of lower prices with increased competition. If there is one store, that store costs more. If there are two stores, suddenly there is a competition for your money. Multiply that by a hundred and suddenly you have the stores in a city.
I've had people tell me that this sort of understanding wouldn't work for them. That their work is in the country and therefore living in the city is more expensive, or that the price difference is drastically higher or lower than I have experienced. Or that 'things have changed over the years' ( I find this one odd, since 1) my experiences spread over many years and 2) my experiences are Still Happening Now. Not all in long ago reminiscences.). I understand, not all people have the same experiences. If you live in South Africa, maybe cities are different. If you live in Hawaii, maybe houses are different. If you live in the Yukon, maybe food is different. Absolutely. In MY experience, though, the arguments for urban/rural living from an economic perspective have been skewed; cities are often just as inexpensive, and very frequently MORE inexpensive in almost all categories, than rural living.
As long as you don't buy a house. :-)
Now in terms of food and household supplies, I've found the price differences to be a mixed bag. When we lived out on the East coast of Canada, the cost of 4L of milk was close to $8. Here in central Canada, the cost of 4L of milk is under $4. In fact, almost everything was more expensive out there! I have found when buying stuff that the city is almost universally cheaper than the country and I assume the reason behind this is the simple fact of lower prices with increased competition. If there is one store, that store costs more. If there are two stores, suddenly there is a competition for your money. Multiply that by a hundred and suddenly you have the stores in a city.
I've had people tell me that this sort of understanding wouldn't work for them. That their work is in the country and therefore living in the city is more expensive, or that the price difference is drastically higher or lower than I have experienced. Or that 'things have changed over the years' ( I find this one odd, since 1) my experiences spread over many years and 2) my experiences are Still Happening Now. Not all in long ago reminiscences.). I understand, not all people have the same experiences. If you live in South Africa, maybe cities are different. If you live in Hawaii, maybe houses are different. If you live in the Yukon, maybe food is different. Absolutely. In MY experience, though, the arguments for urban/rural living from an economic perspective have been skewed; cities are often just as inexpensive, and very frequently MORE inexpensive in almost all categories, than rural living.
As long as you don't buy a house. :-)
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