Graceful Simplicity

I am reading such an amazing book right now: Graceful Simplicity by Jerome Segal. It's a brilliant book about, you guessed it, living a gracefully simple life. It's not a set of rules to live by that will help you declutter, spend less, etc like most of the simple living books will have you believe. Instead, it's about recognizing that a lot of us are already stretching to live within the means of the income we have and that instead the focus needs to be on creating a 'new central economic paradigm' at the governmental level that will help those interested in simple living achieve their goals. I am so very excited about some of the ideas, I must share a few from this 'new paradigm'

*The good life is a form of simple living. It is found primarily in meaningful activity and the simple pleasures of friends and family. It requires an abundance of time to do things right.

*The economy contributes to a good life by providing goods and services to meet core needs, by offering meaningful forms of activity and by providing economic security.

*Work is itself a central arena in which the good life is either found or lost. Work is not a mere means to income or productive output; at its best it is an opportunity for people to engage their highest qualities and creativities in ways that are of value to others. The kinds of work opportunities a society has to offer are its real outputs, the forms of life it makes available.

I have found myself perusing the teaching jobs section of craigslist north county recently. It's interesting how things coincide. Segal points out that if part time work wasn't penalized (lack of benefits, security, etc) but, rather, embraced- then families could work to split time working to stay with children, spend more free time together, be more creative in their scheduling and all of these things have been shown to increase productivity. But businesses just don't get that.

All right, enough philosophizing for one night. Pictures tomorrow. I promise to at least try.