Frugality and Generosity

Friday, February 14, 2014

     Henry David Thoreau, the Transcendentalist thinker who wrote Walden, celebrates frugality.  His ideas caught on and have inspired generations of the would-be self-reliant, including me.  Thoreau essentially proposed that we make our lives simpler so that they could be more meaningful, inner fulfillment replacing the quest for things, status and riches.  Of course, you have to be in a position to choose, rather than be compelled to give up things to find appreciation in a simpler life: if you've always struggled to meet basic needs, the wisdom of Thoreau's philosophy may not be as apparent as it was to him.

     Emerson, another Transcendentalist, wrote an essay, "Self-Reliance", and warned "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes".  The warning seems, at first reading, more practical than philosophic: if, at your own expense, you have to make an investment in a completely new wardrobe in order to take up a project, you probably won't recoup it if the business fails.  However, there's also a suggestion that using clothes to change the way you look to the world is inherently suspect, that it involves deception --not just of the world, but perhaps of yourself.  The axiom is not a prohibition, but means to strike a cautionary note against frippery.

     Ascetic religious orders have long practiced asceticism --an extreme form of frugality-- in their mode of living.  Stripping away all the externals is supposed to unclutter the mind and spirit, the better to know the divine.  Anyone who has ever spent any time doing the Buddhist practice of za-zen, sitting in meditation on a bare floor for a long practice, trying to empty the mind of thoughts; or anyone who has ever said a series of rosaries, knows that it is not easy, even with the best will in the world, to reach a state of inner peacefulness in the face of our restless minds and hearts.  The inner release some faiths call "grace" is not easily won, or willed.

     Frugality in daily life is a capacity that can be developed, although I know that, for myself, I veer towards it only to want to go in the other direction after a while.  I can cook a pot of pasta and live on it for two days, but by the third, I want to enjoy richer foods.  I can turn down restaurant invitations, but when  neighbors and I organize a potluck, I want to bring a good bottle of Bordeaux, not mineral water.

     The French will speak of a glass of champagne as "lifting the spirits" (faire remoter la morale).  It doesn't work for everyone, though.  Sometimes it lifts them temporarily only to bring them crashing down again, requiring a re-administration of the dose in larger numbers.  And sometimes it seems nothing could possibly make better the inner forlornness many of us live with, day-in-and-day out, whether because we're sick of the lousy weather (count me among that group this winter); or for deeper, more intractable reasons.

     For most of us the life we have to lead is as good a life as we're going to have --there's no fairy godmother to whisk us away to a life less ordinary.  We have to find a compromise between despair and dumb optimism.  (Which reminds me that a study done a few years ago found that optimists' assessments of facts were more unrealistic than those of depressives, whose assessments were largely correct.)  We crawl through a dark tunnel, life, feeling our way as we go, sometimes seeing, in the far distance, enough light to move forward rapidly towards our goal --greater advancement through the tunnel-- and at other times learning we've taken a wrong turn and have to return to the last place where we were sure of our direction.  Then sometimes, we think we've taken a wrong turn, which turns out to be a right one.

     All we can do is try not to overburden ourselves with paraphernalia that does not serve to move us forward. Some burdens we have to carry: the child we brought into the world, the sick parent or spouse.  The Transcendentalists (some of whom read the foundational texts of Eastern religions and were inspired by them) recognized that frugality in the outward modes of living can reap inner rewards more valuable than the material things foregone, an inner clarity and calm which translates into generosity, the antithesis of frugality.

     I can articulate the concept, but living it is another story.  Emotional generosity can be difficult for me --it's easier to be frugal with my feelings than open-handed.  Growing up it was essential to discipline my emotions (of which I had more than my share) to get past them.  Now that I'm at the other end of life's curve, the habit of emotional restraint can sometimes lead me to be less charitable towards others.  The discipline of daily life this season --having to make an extra, prolonged effort to gird the body to face the elements, staying in more than going out-- has tested me.  At home, writing here, settled for the night, I heard the phone ring: it was a neighbor who has helped me in the past, I could see from the phone's screen.  I didn't want to interrupt my routine and was going to let the answering machine stand in for me, when I realized how cheap I was being with my heart.  I took the call:  The person on the other end was generously returning mine of earlier today after a long day shoveling out cars stuck in the snow, something he has no choice but to do to make ends meet.

     Let it be a lesson to me.