When Less is Just Less

Sometimes less is just less, and that's okay. 

Yesterday my band, which is called Give and Take, got to hear a new song by one of its members, called "Love in a Tiny Town." The song just goes through several stanzas in which someone who's in love says to the one that he or she loves, “We may not have a big city here to get lost in, we may not have a million entertaining things to go to, so maybe all we're actually going to do this evening is walk around the block in the rain and then sit down at the table to eat, with a candle to light the experience. But all that's okay. We'll be okay."

It's a beautiful song, and I look forward to performing it. Partly just because it's beautiful, but partly because I think people really need to hear its message. There's something so useful about looking at life as an exercise in richly making do. More maybe to my point here though: there's also something useful about honoring what our present lives do NOT contain, so that we're not fooling ourselves into living by a fake and shallow appearance of wisdom. 

I've always been suspicious of the slogan “less is more.”  I think of all sorts of talented people who have given up full professional lives for the sake of their marriages and kids. Yes, that decision probably does provide them with richer, calmer family lives, and maybe on the whole they believe the sacrifices were right for them. But having to dial back your professional aspirations is unquestionably a loss too, and in those hours in which that loss is being rued and grieved, is it really appropriate to say “cheer up, less is more”? Or I think of my own family's decision not to travel abroad or drive long distances. We feel the carbon costs to that kind of travel are just too high, but is staying at home in Northwest Indiana always going to feel more rich in beauty and replete with possibility than say, a week in snowy Banff, or a month in greenest Ireland?  No it's not. And the loss of the possible experience is real. If I am honest with myself, I will admit that.

The same can be said of any number of decisions that good people make every day for the sake of true sustainability: Plunging into making real food instead of buying it processed. Spending the extra bucks to buy your goods locally. Saying yes to an invitation to live in an intentional community. All these efforts and personal campaigns, at some point, are going to involve personal loss. And again, in the moment in which that loss is being felt, it's not appropriate to say, to yourself or to anyone else, “cheer up, less is more.” 

No, sometimes less is just less, and that's okay. Feel the loss. Allow it to be what it is. Then and only then go on with the task of making the most of what you really have.

HB