Over-sophistication?

For the next few days I’m going back to being a ‘lowly technician’ and just hammering through a pile of lab work that needs to be done. I’ve always considered my lab skills as being the very core of my ability to work effectively, and as there’s a pile of stuff to do it does no harm to sharpen them again.

One of the key areas of thinking that’s been running round my head these last few weeks is contrasting how life was when Chris and I were first married. We had no agendas and no pre-experience of either marriage or living away from our parents homes. It was a fantastic place to start, and we were unashamedly open to each other, determined not to hide our feelings and thoughts or keep anything back from each other: partnership was what we wanted. That model of the three-fold cord with Jesus as the third strand. We weren’t disappointed, although we did need to knock a few lumps from each other on the way.

Simplicity and openness are very difficult to retain.

What prompted this blogpost was what I did this weekend. I spent around 3 hours on Saturday and around 8 hours Sunday (into Monday morning) trying to install a stable copy of Windows 98 on a used hard drive in order to make a PC system that could be used for playing old games.

That is one darn’ bucketful of time to allow me to spend more time being entertained in a non-productive fashion.

So this morning as I dashed around the lab getting things ready my thoughts ran along the lines of:

“We should simplify, live less sophisticated and demanding lives”

“But you know you can’t do that. It’s not possible to turn the clock back”

“Why not?”

“……!”

Actually I can think of many *good* reasons for not exactly doing that, but they are all in the grey areas that an older, more mature vision brings. Youth sees everything in black and white (as we did then) and while it can make life simpler, it also means a lot of opportunities are missed.

What would happen if, for instance, if I decided that I spent too much time on the internet? The only way I could easily reduce it would be to decide I couldn’t use it at all – I’m not especially great on self control and moderation, which is one reason we don’t have a telly (although it also did our children a huge amount of good too – gave them the option to think for themselves). But blog-relationships aside, apart from finding more cheap stuff to fill our house with the only USEFUL application for the internet is knowledge – all the rest is entertainment and vanity.

Of course the computer (not just the www) isn’t the only area to simplify, although it’s the one that eats the most time. We currently have 3 vehicles belonging to Chris and myself, plus Ben’s beetle (with a second being arranged). As we have always found, vehicle ownership (with insurance, tax, MOTs and everything) are a significant source of stress. However we live in a village – no way out of owning cars, and preferably 2 of them, since transport here is realistically impossible without.

What else? I could make do with 2 guitars (currently have 9 here) and 1 amp, although more of both are useful in a variety of situations. Coupled with internet usage, my GAS drives some of the hassles and complication in my life. When we were first married we had no money to spare for guitars (mostly) so GAS wasn’t really a problem – I’d look, but never touched as I couldn’t afford and didn’t worry about it. Mind you, If I thought things could be *made* affordable I’d tie myself in knots to manage it.

What I’m working round to is that the answer to all these issues is both self control and being satisfied.

Further thoughts I had while running around in the lab (this post is being written incrementally) is that I spend more every month on the acquisition of ‘bits’ for my guitar playing than we give in aid to charities. Maybe I should qualify that, in that we believe tithing is the right thing to do, so our church gets 10% of our income, plus other stuff as needed and I’m happy with that. But we’re now very well off *compared to how we were when first married* and certainly as a result, much less aggressive in our giving.

Now I have no desire to become one of those people that lives on the borderline between poverty and enough because they feel the need to give everything they don’t *need* away. Yet at the same time I AM aware of our wealth, relative to so many. And as I observed above, having less DOES make life simpler

Now at the moment this is all safely in the realm of thoughts and wonderings. As such it’s just visual hot air – a way of expressing short comings, a bit of on-line hand wringing, an expression of regret. All dealt with through an internal shrugging of shoulders and just getting on with things as they were. But should these thoughts become action? And if so, what sort? It’s easy to write about stuff, but sometimes more is required and that’s not quite so much fun.

Lent. I don’t do lent.