Rightsizing Our Lives

In the fall of 2016, I downsized, moving from my 3-bedroom, 3-level, townhouse to a one level, two bedroom+den condo that is much more manageable. Although my townhouse was modest, it was spread over three levels including a finished basement where the washer/dryer and television were. Lugging vacuum cleaner and laundry up and down those flights of stairs grew tedious. Cutting grass, shovelling snow, tending to the myriad demands of a house (furnace replacement, peeling window frames, crumbling front steps, driveway sealing, and the straw that broke me – raccoon in the attic) took its toll. I decluttered ruthlessly. I moved. I downsized.

Now I’ve been reading about the term ‘rightsizing’. And although it is usually applied to companies (a benign term, less offensive than ‘downsize’, but which also includes reducing the workforce to create more efficiencies and profits), I’m learning that the word can also be applied to our lives.

Rightsizing doesn’t mean downsizing your living space or your closets or even your body. It means making choices that align with your needs, values and vision for yourself, rather than chasing after the elusive ‘more’ or ‘when I have …[enough free time], [more money], [more space], [a better job]’…fill in the blanks, you get the idea.

Rightsizing means designing the life you want rather than letting life happen to you. It means choosing carefully. It’s easy to get caught up in a culture that says, ‘Go for more’, “You deserve it’, “Why not, it won’t break the bank”. But, which wolf within us are we feeding (as I wrote about in a previous post)? Are we allowing our desires, rather than our needs, to propel our decisions?

I think I’ve taken a couple of steps towards rightsizing (although I wasn’t calling it that) by acknowledging that right now I need more time for a part of myself that has been wanting attention. I’ve reduced my work week so I can write, paint, walk or maybe just gaze out the window, allowing my mind and curiosity to wander down different paths.

In today’s western society, we shrink back from just doing nothing, afraid of being bored. We dread boredom, reaching constantly for our TV remotes, our laptops, our phones to fend it off. But the philosopher Bertrand Russell says that boredom can be ‘fructifying”. And I believe him.

I like the mind of Bertrand Russell. Whenever I ponder thoughts about life, purpose, the human condition, I remind myself that whatever thoughts I have, someone, at some time, has thought similar thoughts before, and expressed it much better than I ever could.

I have two beat up copies of Russell’s books which I have not opened in quite a while. I pulled out “The Conquest of Happiness” from my bookshelves. In the chapter on “Boredom and Excitement” he writes, “One of the essentials of boredom consists in the contrast between present circumstances and some other more agreeable circumstances which force themselves irresistibly upon the imagination.”  It seems to me he is talking about the ‘chasing’ we do today.

He goes on to say “constructive purposes do not easily form themselves in a boy’s mind if he is living a life of distractions and dissipations, for in that case his thoughts will always be directed towards the next pleasure rather than towards the distant achievement.” 

So, all this to say – what does this mean for me? What are the next steps in rightsizing and designing my life?  Is it taking stock? Is it asking the questions behind the questions behind the decisions? Is it looking backwards or looking forwards or both? Is it sitting idle, gazing out the window?

I only raise the questions, I don’t pretend to know the answers.

Russell ends the chapter with: “A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”

I’m all for a quiet life.