Living Lightly

It began as simply as this: I was eating an orange. For weeks I had been living at a fishing camp in Northern Michigan—walking, picking blueberries, cooking, eating, swimming in the pond—and seeing very few people. As I sat in the sunshine on the tumbledown deck of an old cabin, listening to the sound of the trout stream, watching the birds in the pines, and eating my orange, I experienced a strong feeling of happiness and contentment, and I knew I wanted more of these moments of nature and simplicity.

Thirty-eight years later, the day I retired, I walked down to our urban pond and sat on a bench for over two hours. I watched the sun sparkle on water, looked closely at the geese, listened to the waves lapping the shore, and was content.

Retirement has given me the priceless opportunity to practice living simply every single day, to appreciate the joys of nature, close friends and family, spiritual and physical health, the arts, and solitude, while there is still time. People often ask me if I’m keeping busy in retirement, and I answer that I am trying not to.

Of course, this does not mean doing nothing. What it does mean is mindfully choosing what will bring me joy and contentment. This necessitates slowing down—a lot. I recognize that, for many people, busyness in retirement is both welcome and necessary. For me, and perhaps for other retirees, less is, indeed, more.

I try to live as lightly as possible in the material realm. My husband and I live in a 700-square-foot condo, which means that we cannot accumulate much stuff. Once a month we go through our two rooms and three closets and “de-clutter”—we recycle and throw out a lot. We also find that we can get by with very little. We almost never buy books any more, for example, but are great users of the public library, which has more room to store them than we do. Living in a city means I can walk to the library, store, gym, and yoga center, and I use public transportation frequently. I try to avoid the consumer culture, which I feel conditions impatience and dissatisfaction. I stay away from malls and shopping centers. I watch, listen to, and read almost no media with advertising. Instead I watch films, listen to music, read books.

I search for solitude in my life. One way to do this is to carve out at least one day a week with no plans at all. This still is a little frightening— what am I going to do with myself with no plans? But these silence-and-solitude days almost always turn out to be the best days of all. They restore the balance in my life. One week last summer we had a very busy time—my husband was singing at Tanglewood and we had nonstop guests, picnics, parties, rehearsals, and concerts. After five days of this, I spent one entire day back in the condo, leaving only once to walk to the mailbox. This day of silence and solitude rejuvenated me. I savored moments of the previous week, thought about our friends and the music, and meditated on the present. By the time my husband returned from work, I felt much more centered and able to focus. When my son called that evening, I was able to pay close attention to him.

The Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement plays an important role in my retirement, and because HILR offers so many choices and has no prescribed model of how to be a member, it fits well into my attempts to live more simply. After a little experimentation, I decided to limit myself to one full day a week there, at least for now. This offers me enough social and intellectual stimulation to last for the rest of the week. Taking only two courses means I can really focus on them and prepare well for each. I sometimes go out to lunch with fellow members or I eat lunch in the Common Room and meet new people; and when I have had too much socializing and the weather is nice, I take my bag lunch out and eat on a bench in Radcliffe Yard. The physical setup of HILR symbolizes for me a balance between community and solitude. One has a choice—community room for socializing or quiet library for reading and reflection.

HILR has allowed me to expand and enrich my areas of intellectual interest, and I’ve taken courses in science, math, poetry, music, and literature. Beginning to write poetry, which encompasses both simplicity and richness, has been one of the highlights of my retirement. I tried to express the joy I’ve found in slowing down in this poem:

Personal Best

Once I scrambled up the mountain

Getting to the top my only goal. Now I stop often

Resting in protected, sunny spots in the cold months,

Finding shady rocks with breezes in the summer,

Sacred places where I can sit and watch and wait and listen.

(The book-time for this hike is three hours, but my personal best is eight.)

Once I timed my swims across the pond

Hoping each day to lop off a few seconds

Getting to the other side my only goal.

Now I swim to the middle and lie with my face to the sky,

Trusting in the water to hold my weight,

Floating in the beauty of trees, clouds, and sky.

(The pond can be swum in 20 minutes, but my personal best is 60.)

Once I hurried through my life,

Wanting always to be faster, better, and busier,

Completing every task quickly my only goal.

Now I find grace in stillness.

I’ve learned the wisdom of the Chinese characters:

“Busy-ness” and “heart-killing” are the same.

(The book says one’s hours must be kept busy, but my personal best days are the quiet ones.)

Another way I search for simplicity and contentment is through nature. Almost every day I find a way to be quiet in nature, even if it is simply sitting in a protected spot next to Spy Pond in the winter sunshine. Weekends I frequently get out for hiking or cross-country skiing, and I swim outdoors from May through September. Walden Pond is a lovely place for solitude and reflection. I can feel the spirit of Thoreau and his challenge to us to live simply and deliberately as I swim or walk there. In the winter we try to spend at least a few days at an informal cross-country ski place in rural Vermont; in the spring we spend a week at a non-commercial Buddhist hot springs in California; and in the summer I volunteer as a hike leader for at least two weeks at a wonderfully quiet camp in the eastern, non-commercial part of the White Mountains.

I also participate in several mostly silent Buddhist retreats a year. For me, silence is a big part of slowing down and living lightly. I enjoy being alone and silent; I also enjoy being with other people who are practicing silence, be it at an actual retreat, in the silent reading cabin at the hiking camp, or in the library at HILR.

Trying to live lightly has also made us re-evaluate our love of travel. More and more, my husband and I limit ourselves to travel close to home. If lured by family, friends, and beautiful spots, we will travel longer distances, but we think carefully about the amount of the earth’s resources air travel uses.

Living lightly does not mean giving up what we love. Both my husband and I have a passion for live theater, which we satisfy by volunteer ushering for four Boston theater companies. This gives us a way to see many excellent plays, and feel we are a small part of the productions. By ushering and attending theater symposiums we have gotten to know quite a few theater people in the Boston area, which has been very enriching. Most enriching of all are the plays themselves, which we often think and talk about for days afterwards.

For me, living lightly includes doing something physical every day, often twice a day. I walk, do yoga, work out at the gym, hike, swim, bike, play badminton, canoe, dance, play ping pong, play shuffleboard, kayak— varying my activities as much as possible. I also enjoy doing creative things with my hands and knit several sweaters, blankets, and hats each year.

I feel it is important to remember to practice moderation in everything— including moderation—and that consistency is not always life’s highest goal. For example, we are flying to California for a party in honor of my sister-inlaw and her many contributions to AIDS care in Oakland; we drive a car to get to the theater; and we own a house, significantly larger than our condo, in western Massachusetts. These choices might not be consistent, but they give us great pleasure, and they are mindful divergences from the path of living more simply.

Retirement gives us the great gift of time. We can choose to use this time in the ways that bring us joy. For me, the Buddha points the way: “For peace, be contented and easy to support, with few duties, living lightly.”

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