Living with Less: The Upside of Downsizing Your Life

By Mark Tabb

Mark Tabb won't ignore the facts about the hectic pace of modern life that we are, ironically, often too tired to acknowledge and change. In his candid and spiritually insightful Living with Less, he declares, “The only way to get more out of life is to choose less. Less stuff. Less activity. Less wanting more. . . . May God give us the courage to choose less stress in order that we might experience more of the life he has planned for us.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: BH Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781433675096

Mark Tabb

 Mark Tabb has authored or coauthored more than thirty books, including the number one New York Times bestseller, Mistaken Identity. 

Book preview

For Valerie

Contents

Preface—More from Less

Smaller

Chapter 1: So What Do You Want out of Life?

Chapter 2: Worth the Effort

Chapter 3: Visions of Grandeur

Chapter 4: Don't Make Me Be Last

Simpler

Chapter 5: Forfeited Souls

Chapter 6: Into Something Beautiful

Chapter 7: The Power of Contentment

Chapter 8: But I Live in the Real World

Slower

Chapter 9: Courtney Dreads Christmas

Chapter 10: Time

Chapter 11: In the Moment

Chapter 12: Holy Interruptions

Chapter 13: Finding Peace in the Minivan

Harder

Chapter 14: Happily Ever After

Chapter 15: This Ain't No Doris Day Movie

Chapter 16: Constant Sacrifice

Epilogue

Notes

Preface

More from Less

Let me get right to the point: The only way to get more out of life is to choose less.

Less stuff.

Less activity.

Less wanting more.

Less of you.

I apologize if this seems a little abrupt. Believe me, I searched for a different way to kick this off. I wanted to ease into the heavy stuff to make it more palatable and less offensive. Still, more than once, I found myself hitting the Delete button on a touching story because touching and heartwarming didn't quite fit.

I also thought it might be easier if some famed contemplative hit you with the bad news. Maybe Saint Augustine wouldn't insult you while telling you all your priorities are wrong, that you've wasted your life in your pursuit of comfort and material goods. Perhaps you wouldn't be angry if C. S. Lewis told you the frustration that fills your life will never go away until you slow down and begin saying no to yourself and your children. And if Mr. Rogers confronted you with your need to crawl out of the center of your universe and assume a lifestyle of humility, who could argue?

So I searched my library for just the right quote from my favorite authors. One or two came close, but I thought it better just to come right out and say what you and I need to hear: The key to making life matter is to choose to live with less.

Give stuff away.

Simplify your lifestyle.

Deflate your opinion of yourself.

Choose less because less is more.

There I go again, writing with a two-by-four. I keep trying to stop. A wise man once said the bruises of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy, and that's what I'm trying to do: bruise my friends, beginning with myself. I don't enjoy the process, but there is no other way. The bruises on my forehead are starting to add up, but I can't help myself. I've reached a point where the pain is better than the delusion that I can have it all and still have my life count for something. For too long I've spiritualized the hard sayings of Jesus and Moses and Solomon. I know real life is not measured by how much I own, but I assumed I could own as much as I wanted as long as I kept everything in its proper perspective.

I can't. None of us can.

We can't because the world of work and school and mortgages and loading kids in the minivan for ball practice and band recitals and school open houses leaves little time for anything else. The psalmist said to be still and know that the Lord is God, but stillness is hard to find in the perpetual-motion machine in which most of us live. Jesus said He came that you and I might have life and have it to the full. My life is full. Yours probably is as well. Too full. Full of stuff. Full of activities. Full of ever-expanding schedules and shrinking days. Full of the desire for more. Somehow, I don't believe this is what Jesus had in mind. Through it all, something is missing. And that something is the very thing I really want out of life.

I want joy. Not happiness, but real abiding joy—a joy that outlasts hard times and refuses to be chained to good times.

I want real relationships. I know a lot of people. I want to really know some of them, beginning with my family.

I want freedom. Not the freedom to do what I want, but the freedom to go to sleep at night without the weight of worry raising my blood pressure.

But more than anything, I want what I devote my life to, to last longer than I do.

Unfortunately, all I really want out of life is constantly squeezed out by noises that refuse to take no for an answer. The bills, they demand to be paid. They get really angry when they're ignored. And food, everyone in my household has this strange addiction to food. Someone has to go buy it. Someone has to prepare it. Someone has to clean up afterward. If only the Little Red Hen were available. And the house, it always wants something. Mow my yard, it says. And clean my gutters and fix my roof and unclog my sink. The house never shuts up (although I learned a long time ago to tune out its demand to be cleaned). And I'm just getting started.

Then there's the rush. It never seems to end. Between the job and the kids and church, there's never a moment to call our own. Even if we did, it isn't as though our minds would be free to focus on what we really want out of life.

The only thing better than the rush is stress-filled rush. And stress is everywhere. Especially at work. If by some strange coincidence we managed to have a stress-free day on the job, the world might come to an end. Someone always has a complaint or the boss wants to downsize manpower while increasing production or rumors of a merger and subsequent job cuts float around. If everybody I worked with weren't so—how can I put this mildly?—common sense-challenged and if they would just stop griping for even a day, maybe then I could make a serious run at joy or real relationships or doing something that will outlast me. But they don't and I can't and I wonder if I ever will.

And home isn't much better. The average family is always on the run. This conglomeration of people who love one another rarely finds time to eat a meal together. And with each passing year, it seems to get worse. Too much to do, too little time—intimate strangers may be a better label than family.

I look for a little solace at church, but between committee meetings and Bible study groups and taking the youth bowling and working on the building (which wasn't built right to begin with, so much for quality work from volunteers), the place sometimes gives me more headaches than peace and joy and love. Then the pastor asks for volunteers for a new program he wants to start. I know I should sign up, but I don't want to give up another Saturday. Instead of feeling better about my life, I walk away feeling guilty.

Now that my whine fest is over, can I be completely honest? The demands and stress of the day rarely keep me from pursuing deeper relationships with my wife and daughters. My job doesn't rob me of time I might spend on the things that are most important to me. Mowing the lawn and painting doors and all the constant maintenance my one-hundred-year-old house demands never stop me from doing what I want to do. No, the greatest barrier I must overcome in my struggle to find the life I really want is me. And your greatest barrier is you.

I know what I say I want out of life. With my lips I confess that joy is found in growing closer to people I love and becoming more like the God I say I follow. But when push comes to shove, I shove myself onto the couch, remote in hand, and waste hours at a time, ignoring both my God and my family. I know with my head that money can't buy happiness, but that doesn't stop me from drooling over the Best Buy ads. And then there's the schedule. No one makes us try to do it all. Running children from one event or practice to another until we identify the days of the week by the coach we see is not forced upon us. The pressure comes from within. From inside of me. I could say no. And so could you. But we don't. We can't. Somehow the incredible pace of our schedule meets a need. It makes us feel important, useful. Again, the problem isn't the coach who calls and asks if I can make twenty-five sandwiches for the track team. The real problem is me.

My life and my schedule and my stress didn't choose me. I chose them. Before I can even think of trying to squeeze more joy out of life, I must first realize that something has to change. Only when I reach the point of frustration meltdown—when I go to bed and wonder where the day went and dread dragging myself out from under the covers in six hours—only then will I be willing to make some needed changes.

And that's what this book is all about. This isn't a book that will tell you how to squeeze more out of an already-packed schedule. Nor will it tell you how to find both material comfort and spiritual bliss. You will not find the path to the simple life in which you and your family will live in perfect peace and harmony. I wish you could, but perfect peace and harmony cannot be found this side of heaven. Instead, this is a book about making one of the most difficult decisions any of us will ever make—the decision to choose less out of life so that you might find what you really want. The only way to enjoy life is to choose to live with less, for less is more.

What follows are not some pie-in-the-sky platitudes discovered while spending a couple of years holed up in some desert monastery. Nor are the following sixteen chapters full of perfected advice. More than anything I've ever written, this book has been a journey. I started working on the idea more than five years ago. As time passed, I assumed that moving from a concept to words on a page would be easy. After all, I felt like I'd lived the tough choices this book challenges you to make. And then I started writing. I discovered I had so much more to learn.

What follows is the most difficult book I've ever attempted—a fact I find more than a little ironic. A book on simplifying life complicated my own life as I tried to write it. Now, looking back over the process of the past few months, I realize it had to be this way. Choosing less in a world that refuses to deny itself anything will never be easy. Ever. Nor did I want to paint the picture of some ideal life with clichéd solutions that would only leave you frustrated and burdened with guilt. This world is a complicated place and has been since the day Adam and Eve disobeyed God and plunged the world into sin. Finding our way through this mess will not be easy.

Finally, I wanted this book to accurately reflect the message of the Bible. Real life can only be found in a right relationship with the God who created you. I pray that message flows through every page.

The only way to get more out of life is to choose less. Less stuff. Less activity. Less wanting more. Less of you. And less of me too. May God give us the courage to choose less so that we might experience more of the life He has planned for us.

Smaller

Chapter 1

So What Do You Want out of Life?

It is vanity to wish for long life

and to care little about a well-spent life.

THOMAS À KEMPIS, THE IMITATION OF CHRIST

He has planted eternity in the human heart,

but even so, people cannot see the whole scope

of God's work from beginning to end.

ECCLESIASTES 3:11 (NLT)

Nobody ever says, I want to throw my life away. At least not in words. You never hear a commencement speaker challenge graduates to go out into the world and fritter away their lives on trivialities that evaporate from memory five seconds after they're done. Some speakers may want to, but no one ever does. Nor does anyone ever plan to have the words Who cares who lies here? He didn't do much anyway etched on their tombstone. We'd rather donate our bodies to science than leave behind a legacy of absolute uselessness. At least then our corpse might serve some greater purpose. No one wants to live a life that is pointless. Our souls are hardwired for something more. We want to find some reason for our existence. We need our lives to matter.

We also feel compelled to find happiness. We want to smile. We want to laugh. We want to enjoy the time we have on planet Earth. Every fairy tale ends with the words, And they lived happily ever after, and that's what we hope to find as well—the happy ending, along with the happy beginning and happy middle. Happiness is more than a goal. We regard it as a God-given right. The Declaration of Independence itself calls the pursuit of happiness one of the inalienable rights endowed by our Creator, along with life and liberty. And pursue it we do. We choose everything from careers to mates to fabric softeners based on what will make us happy. Although we soon learn that we can't be happy every minute of every day, we hope the good times will outnumber the bad. We want the same for our children and grandchildren. Just let them be happy and healthy, and we will be satisfied.

That's all we really want out of life: a reason for living and a way to enjoy the journey. Is that too much to ask?

Standing in Our Way

Perhaps it is too much to ask. The world in which we live is not designed to foster happiness. Danger lurks around every corner, while pain and suffering hunt us down like hungry lions. No one is exempt. There is no safe place to hide, no little patch of unspoiled paradise that will etch permanent smiles on our faces.

My wife and I thought we found a perfect spot early one afternoon while driving along the California coast. We stopped just north of San Francisco at a place called Stinson Beach. To me, the combination of peaks and pines of the mountains with the soft sand, rolling surf, and sea lions of the beach made this place heaven on earth. After buying supplies from a sandwich shop for a romantic picnic, the two of us walked out across