Nearing Enough
(Page 3 of 6)
Freed from material clutter, time and energy waste, and nonessentials, Helen and Scott Nearing felt "as free as a caged wild bird who finds himself once more on the wing."
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Freed from consumerism, yes, but they were not dropping out of society. The Nearings wrote, "We were not seeking to escape. Quite the contrary, we wanted to find a way in which we could put more into life and get more out of it. We were not shirking obligations but looking for an opportunity to take on more worthwhile responsibilities. The chance to help, improve, and rebuild was more than an opportunity. As citizens, we regarded it as an assignment."
THE GOOD LIFE FORMULA
That candlelit night long ago, I read about how Scott, a former academic, and, Helen, a musician, built their first stone house while gardening among Vermont boulders, and about their decid ing upon maple syrup as a cash crop to round out their livelihood.
I read about their 10-year "pay-as-you-go" plan, their "Constitution of our household organization" for living wisely and for avoiding debt. They planned to "make a living under conditions that would preserve and enlarge joy in workmanship, would give a sense of achievement, thereby promoting integrity and self respect; would assure a large measure of self-sufficiency and thus make it more difficult for civilization to impose restrictive and coercive economic pressures, and make it easier to guarantee the solvency of the enterprise."
They were committed to raising as much food as they could, given local soil and climate, and to eating with the seasons. As they kept no animals, they were vegetarians who ate raw, whole food; this, in turn, meant that they spent scant time in food preparation. They maintained that eating in-season, fresh, vital food that they had grown themselves kept them healthy.
"One of the chief factors that took us out of the city into the country was an awareness of the menace to health arising out of food processing and poisoning and a determination to safeguard ourselves against it," the Nearings wrote. "Food processing, poisoning and drugging is undermining the health of the American people as well as yielding large profits to the individuals and corporations engaged in processing, poisoning and drugging."
The Nearings' rendering of The Good Life is neither fascist nor puritanical, nor a capitalist commitment to work for work's sake, for God's sake or for the bottom line's sake. The Nearings' theory and practice of living The Good Life is an integrated balance of all works necessary to a thoroughgoing, unequivocal, absolute life, including embracing good friends, developing live soil, being socially aware and useful, growing vital food, and creating leisure time, music, writing and art.
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