Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Saturday, September 20, 2009

I’ve been leading your mainstream sustainability activist’s life for some time now. You know my type: the dedicated recycler, Prius-driving, garden-growing, committed exerciser who tries not to multi-task. In my life over the past decade, I’ve attended green conferences around the country, advising others how to simplify their lives. I’ve suggested countertop composting, eating organic, eating local, eating lower on the food chain. I’ve urged people to walk more, save more, engage more fully in community life. I’ve warned about the perils of global warming and urged people to carry travel mugs, reusable bags and Tupperware to restaurant meals. I’ve invited people to slow down, put vegetable gardens in the ground and buy used. My best all-time line just popped out one day during an interview with a journalist here in North Carolina: “Living in the present,” I said, “has become a thing of the past.”

The truth is, all these things I’ve been advocating have come to pass. People are paying more attention, driving less, saving more, and so forth. Americans have gotten the picture — and quickly — that “living large” is not the best way to go. It has caused us to biggie-size our bellies, to stuffocate our homes, and to create more angst than happiness. That Americans need to live on less is no longer in cyberspace’s “outbox” but it’s landed in our culture’s “sent items” box.

Of course, Americans continue to need guidance on lifestyle simplification, but, personally, I’m ready for a break, to break some new ground of my own. I want to pare it down further, to dig deeper, to get closer to the core. Through my almost two decades of simplicity advocacy, I’ve often remarked that many Americans who embrace simplicity come at it from having lived abroad, in cultures that were less materially saturated than our own.

So now it’s my turn to de-saturate, as my experiment in simplicity continues. On September 30, I leave Mount Airy for Charlotte for an overnight with a friend where together we’ll celebrate the 82nd birthday of another friend; the next morning, it’s off to Chicago. Again, in slower-travel fashion, I’ll spend an afternoon, evening and a full day in the Windy City with another set of friends before boarding an overnight, non-stop flight to Warsaw via LOT, the Polish Airlines.

Then, my grand, nine-month adventure begins. In Poland, in quarters sight-as-yet unseen, I’ll live on less. Via email exchanges, a friend of a friend and I struck a deal for me to rent two rooms in her townhouse for nine months. There, I’ll have no cell phone, no car, and only as much stuff as I can carry in two suitcases. (Of course, I’m also bringing my laptop in order to do my work and reach out to the world.) In Warsaw, I fully expect to meet new people, to hear the language I’ve loved my entire life but never mastered. I’m taking my father’s journey in reverse. He was an exiled Pole, forcibly torn from his family and the country he loved, who started his life over in the New World with an American wife (my mother). I am a non-exiled American who is voluntarily taking this journey to the Old Country. I have found the money and made the time for this moment. I will miss my mother, sister and close friends, but my son will be at my side to share the experience, to learn the language, to drink in the wisdom of these sagacious, tenacious people.

So these next ten days before my departure are all about getting ready. I’m packing boxes, giving as much as I can to Goodwill, to Habitat’s Restore, to friends and family. I’ve taken loads to consignment stores and am trying to eat through my pantry and freezer. I’m laying out the clothes I plan to take on the bed in my guest room. Can I live with these clothes for nine months? What will be that mystery item that I forget that will vex me from Warsaw?

Tomorrow, I take my 2 1/2 year old Prius down to Winston-Salem where I’m selling it to Carmax. I’d debated for months whether to keep it. “You won’t be able to buy this car when you get back for what you’ll get for it,” one friend cautioned. And it’s paid for. “But if you keep it,” another remarked, “you’ll have to find a place to park it; a friend to drive it around the block every couple of weeks. You’ll have to keep it insured…. “ Finally, when my sister and my CPA weighed in on the “sell-it-now-camp,” I was sold. I was sold because theirs was the message I wanted to hear. I want to be unencumbered. I want to live without a car. I want to simplify my life.

In Warsaw, I aim to thoughtfully possess those fewer things in my life. And having fewer things in my life will free me up to embrace the non-material: new friendships, observations, the passing scene. Over there, I want more than anything to live in the present — for living in the present to become a thing of the present.