Copyright 1999 by Linda Breen Pierce. All rights reserved.
The inspiration for this book originated in 1968 in a small rural village in Senegal, West Africa. I was twenty years old at the time. For three months I lived in this village of 400 people who had no running water, electricity, plumbing, dishwashers, TV’s, calculators, or cameras. People lived in simple mud huts clustered along a few dirt paths. There was one car for the entire village. It was the first year of a seven-year drought. I lost 20 pounds from my already thin frame. Nothing that had happened before or since has affected me more. Everything I had learned from my relatively sheltered, middle-class upbringing was brought into question. In some ways, this book is my attempt to make some sense of that experience. What I found in Senegal was a group of people who were more joyful, vibrant, fulfilled, and loving than 95 percent of the American people I have known, including myself. In that small bush village, it was difficult to distinguish work from play. We were always laughing, singing, and playing games while we ground up grains with pestles and mortars, carried water from the well, and worked in the fields. Humor was ever present and overflowing. You could not go for more than 15 minutes in that village without bursting out in a big belly laugh. Anger was expressed immediately, then released, followed by laughter. Sensuous music and dancing kept us up late every night. However, life in an African bush village was not some sort of utopia; it was real life. I saw people suffer from malnutrition, skin ulcers and other medical problems. I held dying babies in my arms. There was not enough food. There were tears, yes, and plenty of worry about whether it would ever rain. But somehow, in spite of all of life’s challenges and disappointments, these people had a greater sense of well-being, a more intimate and rewarding community life, a deeper spiritual awareness and more joy and fun in their lives than any other people I’ve come to know. I returned from Senegal and fell into step with the times, living the life of a typical American “yuppie” baby boomer. I graduated from college, married, and then divorced five years later. I then obtained my admission ticket to a professional life (a law degree), married a second time, and worked as a lawyer for ten years. Mixed into these marker events of my life were years spent working in clerical jobs and time spent traveling in foreign countries. Then in September of 1995, I stumbled upon the concepts of voluntary simplicity and simple living when I read an article in Worth magazine entitled “Downshifters,” by John Brant. I was delighted to discover that the thoughts and feelings that I had been ruminating on for years had been discussed, written about, and critiqued by others. Reading this article would change my life. I immediately proceeded to read everything I could find on this topic. There was and continues to be a myriad of articles and books published about simple living and all its facets. Most of the simplicity books I read told me why or how to simplify my life, but I found little written about real people who had actually tried it. I became curious about what had happened in the lives of these people. What did simple living actually look like in the lives of real people? How did it translate into our modern day-to-day world? Could people who embrace this lifestyle sustain it over time? What were the downsides? Was it worth it? Did they miss their former lifestyles? And so this book was born. . . |