It has been a momentous few weeks for me. I started my new position. I completed and submitted my book manuscript. And I have grappled with a whole series of small problems — I cut a corner too tight in an underground garage and badly scraped the side of my car, the swimming pool sprung a leak, we had a grass fire caused by a faulty circuit breaker, someone accidentally damaged our side gate.

The combination of all these things in rapid succession would have been too much for ‘the old me’ to handle. Sudden dramatic change, time pressure, and unwelcome surprises are all major stressers in our lives.

How does resilience help us cope with all three of these sources of stress?

1. Sudden Dramatic Change: If it’s not an unwelcome change (if it is, see point 3) sudden changes should be joyous. A new member of the community, a new love, a new career — these are things to cherish, to celebrate, not to get stressed over. We should take our cue from what happens when we fall in love: Time stops, goes away. We are there in the moment, and it lasts almost forever. So the change over this infinite time is so gradual it is no noticeable change at all. Love change, embrace it, slow it down, make it last, and the stress disappears.
2. Time Pressure: Time pressures are, like time itself, illusory, self-imposed. You either have sufficient time to do something or you don’t. Worrying about whether you have enough time changes nothing. You can reduce the worry by not creating expectations (in others or in yourself), expectations that you have enough time to do something when you don’t. This is the agony of the procrastinator — the tendency to put things off until there is almost, or perhaps, not enough time to do them. This is human nature (we do what we must, when we must, and not before; we are preoccupied our whole lives with the needs of the moment). But in the modern world it is unhealthy. You’ll get it done or you won’t. So put away the stopwatch, just do it, and enjoy every moment of it. I ended up rewriting a lot more of my book than I expected, and adding a lot more. For three weekends I worked twelve hour days, and loved every second of it. I didn’t care about the deadline, as close as it was. So there was no stress. The work took as long as it took, as long it had to take.
3. Unwelcome Surprises: This is the toughest of the three stresses, the one that still gets to me — sometimes. The flood and the fire stressed me briefly, because they could have been disastrous, if they’d spread to the house, the wetlands, or the neighbours’. You can tell yourself rationally that it’s absurd to get stressed about what could have been, that it’s a fiction, and so not worth worrying about or getting angry about, but it takes practice to do this. The car accident didn’t stress me much at all (although I was annoyed at myself, because I wasn’t paying attention). And the fence damage only annoyed me because the guy who did it didn’t admit it right away — I had to approach him. We can get better at handling the stress reaction to these things, I think, with practice putting it behind us, adapting it it, letting it bounce off us, flow through us. But what if it’s a truly horrific surprise — the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, a bankruptcy or an involuntary move? Can we ‘learn’ to let such crises flow through us as well, without remorse for what we might have done differently, for the fiction of what could have been? I’m not so sure.

I’ve also been fortunate not to have faced a fourth source of stress — a longer-term adversity, such as having to look after a loved one (or worse, someone I don’t love), or putting up with constant pain or disfigurement or a life-altering disability. The people I know who face such stresses have told me they don’t feel courageous or like martyrs: What seems to us to be courage, they say, is simply not having any other choice — we do what we must. Nevertheless, to me, this would be a form of imprisonment, and, like all of nature’s creatures, imprisonment is what we fear most, the form of stress that has no resolution, no relief, no way of coping through resilience.

Those who are imprisoned, regardless of whether I think, or anyone thinks, that imprisonment is real or self-inflicted, are the unhappiest people, I think, in the world. It is no wonder they seek escape, solace, through drugs or religion or suicide.

So now whenever I experience one of the three transient stresses above I imagine being imprisoned — with no escape, no way of coping by slowing time down or just doing things in the moment or rationalizing that ‘what could have been’ is absurd to be unhappy about — and it’s the gratefulness I feel at realizing that my stressful situation will soon pass, vanish backwards into the fiction, the exhaust of the past that is disconnected from Now, that discharges my stress most quickly and powerfully.

But that realization and that gratefulness also resurfaces my unbearable grief for Gaia, because I am, we all are (those of us who feel it, anyway) connected with all-life-on-Earth, and hence with every creature who is imprisoned, who is suffering not just for a brief moment but all the time of their life without escape.

It is a paradox that that realization fills me, at once, with such sadness, and yet strengthens the growing joy and resolve that fills my life, a joy I never felt when I was disconnected. So we cope with transient stresses through resilience that comes from practice, from self-awareness and gratefulness and connection, but the by-product of all those things is grief for those whose stresses are not transient, but enduring and unrelieved, and that grief is, in a way, another source of stress, not personal or intense but sympathetic, chronic, a part of us all until the end of the world.

I would certainly agree that building such a large house, even one as well insulated as ours, would be environmentally irresponsible. When we bought it 13 years ago, however, our two kids and their SO’s, two potential grandchildren and three dogs were in the picture. And although they’ve moved out, the fact is that the house is nearly 30 years old and if we weren’t living in it (responsibly), someone else would be living in it (probably less responsibly).

When I think about it, I realize that we’ve made much greater strides towards radical simplicity than even I would have dared to think:

• We had an energy audit done indicating the house is exceptionally well insulated and energy-efficient (it’s built into the side of a hill). There was almost no opportunities for improvement, but we did what they suggested to make it even more efficient.
• Our greatest expenses each year are property taxes and insurance (hardly ecologically harmful).
• We rarely eat in restaurants anymore (when we do, they’re locally-owned and locally-sourced, certified healthy), and eat mostly vegetarian, uncooked, unprocessed, unpackaged foods.
• We avoid Chinese and other imported products as much as possible, and invest in durable, well-made products; we buy sparingly, not frivolously, and >90% of our purchases are Canadian made goods.
• We have virtually no garbage; everything at the curb is in the blue (recycled) or green (compost) boxes.
• We never use the air-conditioner, despite our record hot summer (dress light, jump in the pool to stay cool).
• We never set the thermostat above 60F in winter, and use our high-efficiency, low-emission fireplace insert burning windfall wood from our own property.
• We rarely watch TV and subscribe to no newspapers and very few magazines; in our extraordinary neighbourhood, we make our own entertainment and get our information electronically.
• We have done and will do no ‘cosmetic’ renovations, no matter how ‘unfashionable’ that may make us.
• We use no fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides and the new trees we plant are native, self-sustaining species.
• We never water the lawn (nor do our neighbours); we don’t care if it’s brown in the summer.
• We don’t drive to buy anything until we have at least three places in the same area to go (no impulse shopping).
• I fly only for work (as rarely as possible) and personal visits are squeezed in around work trips as much as possible.
• We use compact fluorescents (and only when and where we need them), solar lights and candles for light.
• We drink tap water from the community well.
• The pool does not need heating because it’s out in open sun and covered with a solar blanket.

Our total expenses, excluding property taxes and insurance, are a third what they were a decade ago. We’ve made a lot of progress, and are still working on areas where our footprint can be further reduced:

• We need to further reduce gasoline by telecommuting more and mowing the lawn less often.
• We need to reduce water consumption by catching rainwater to water the gardens.
• We need to eliminate pool chemicals by switching to salt water.
• My laptop remains an indulgence that uses too much energy and toxic chemicals.
• We need a better way to dispose of compact fluorescent bulbs.

But while we’ve made some important and conscientious choices to conserve, to consume less, the changes to our lifestyle have been more radical than just what we don’t buy and don’t use. Radical simplicity is about simple pleasures. Nothing gives me more joy than sitting out in the yard, at sunrise or sunset or after dark, and just listening to and watching, paying attention to things I never used to notice. Chelsea our wonderful pound rescue taught me that. I would sooner walk in the forest, in the moonlight, in the rain, than subject myself to any ‘commercial’ entertainment.

I find small-talk a waste of time, and I’ve learned to excuse myself from it politely. I’d much sooner read, or talk about something important. I have no desire to travel, even to Toronto. I’ve found my place, right here, and I never get tired of it, or bored with it. There is always more to learn from it, and from the wild creatures who, like me, belong to it.

When I buy a book that isn’t made from unbleached, recycled paper I complain to the publisher.

There is no sacrifice here. The reductions in our footprint have been completely painless. I am happier than I have ever been, and healthier. With less noise and less unneeded light I notice things I never used to. I find more joy in lamplight, kittens, working together, bubble baths, dew, quiet conversation, sparrows, caresses, homemade music, fireflies, poetry, children’s laughter, stories, thunderstorms, self-organized community activities, wildflowers, helping people, learning how to do things and fix things, silence, wild hares and foxes and deer, scented candles, fruits and vegetables from the garden, love — all these things right here that cost nothing — than I ever found in costly, faraway entertainments.

I wish you could all be here, to share these things with me. So I could show you. Radical simplicity is not just about what you consume. I just can’t believe it took me so long to learn, to understand. Not so simpleafter all.

We all want to believe everything is going to be OK. So when things are going badly, the hucksters of phony miracle cures and reassurances come out in droves like worms after a heavy downpour. We get overweight, a thousand quacks will sell us diets that ‘worked’ for a small sample of people only because they were so desperate that anything would have worked for them, for awhile. We get sick, everyone from Big Pharma to faith healers will sell us something that will heal us, their cures’ efficacy based on doctored trials and hawked by disgraced physicians in white coats.

We get depressed, organized religion will pounce on us in our fragile state with promises, for a tithe, of absolution for our negative thoughts and deeds, salvation in the next, perfect, eternal life, and a community of uncritical people who will embrace us even when we loathe ourselves, and wacko psychologists will fleece us into paying for their wondrous theories and never-ending therapies, and cults will show us, if we give them everything including our minds, the one true way.

And in order to sell their patrons’ flawed and dangerous products, the whores of the corporatists will lie to us and prey on our desperate desire to believe that global warming won’t happen, that our beloved SUVs are better for the environment than hybrids, that ethanol and nukes will safely, cleanly provide all the energy we will ever need, and that the only thing that’s preventing a ‘victory’ in the Middle East is those Iranians, Syrians, and Palestinians, who need to be bombed into behaving properly.

So we get Exxon and Monsanto and other pathological corporatists paying scads of money to incompetent and greedy people to write phony books and articles, and then spending scads more to promote these fraudulent works, and to get morons in the mainstream media to mindlessly propagate the propaganda (and to shamelessly broadcast, as ‘advertising’, these same criminals’ deceptions — such untruths that, if they were directed against shareholders or investors rather than mere consumers, would land the perps in prison for life).

And we put up with it — the greenwashing ads and the fraudulent ‘scientific’ reports and the massive publicity given to the junk science and fictitious research put out by phony ‘think tanks’ and ‘foundations’ that are simply anonymous fronts (with Orwellian names like ‘Citizens for a Free America’) for these same corporatists — because we want to believe.

If we believe that we don’t have to do anything, or that nothing we do (or cease doing) will make any difference anyway, then we are free to do nothing, to go on doing what we were doing before. We do what we must, then we do what’s easy, and then we do what’s fun. There is already so much we must do, to stave off the fear of not having enough, to meet the ever-increasing expectations of the boss, the family, the lawyer, the doctor, the police, the government, and nearly everyone else, that when someone tells us “you don’t have to do anything about that, it’s all a misunderstanding, we’re taking care of it” we will accept it no matter the source or its lack of credibility. One less thing to do, to worry about. More precious time for the easy and fun stuff.

It is just too much to ask us to be informed, and to think critically. Informed, critical thinking is the road to disbelief, to greater personal responsibility, to having to do more that we don’t really want to do. There is just so much stress in our lives already, we don’t want to know. We don’t want to think.

The corporatists, of every stripe, and their whores, understand this. They are playing us perfectly. We are now consumers instead of customers, disengaged cynics instead of citizens. We are not responsible. The corporatists don’t tell us what we don’t want to know. They tell us reassuringly what we don’t have to do. So, dumb and complacent, we don’t know, and we do nothing. And so we can’t complain. It’s our own fault, but now we’re helpless.

Funny thing about information, though. It’s like a genie that won’t go back in the bottle. You learn a little, you can’t unlearn it. You start to pay attention, and that gets you thinking, imagining, wondering. Pretty soon you don’t believe what you’re hearing, what you’re being told. You stop feeling helpless, and blaming yourself, and start to feel responsible, compelled to learn more, to become more informed and think more critically, to do something.

The ads don’t work anymore. You abandon the mainstream media for information sources that are still credible. You find yourself buying less, buying more critically. You discover that learning more creates stress but also makes you happier, more alive, more self-sufficient.

You no longer don’t want to know. You know. You are no longer free to do nothing. You’re free to do something.

Some of the people you know seem to get this. They’ve been going through the same thing you have. But what about everyone else? Daniel Quinn would tell us there’s no point in trying to persuade them, argue with them, until they’re ready. Until then we have to just wait.

But there’s so many of them.

What do we do? Can we afford to wait, while so many people remain the victims of whores in five thousand dollar suits, the apologists and front men and hucksters and lawyers and politicians of all major parties and dirty trick squads of the corporatists whose pathology ruins our world, and who keep so manyin their thrall?

If people won’t understand until they’re ready, how can we help them be ready, help them set themselves free?