Personal Response to Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "Channelled Whelk"
The simplest and yet most challenging way of doing this is by not sleeping. But can I really do that? I am already running on a shortage of sleep and with each passing day my eyes close for a longer period of time while I sit in class struggling to listen to one of my instructors drone on and on about something irrelevant to the course.
Of course, being the end of the semester, any work that was assigned with the due date now dangling dangerously over my head is worth the majority of my class mark. A number of assignments being worth twenty-five to thiry percent, I find myself wasting time by worrying about not finishing and how it will affect my grade rather than using that time to finish.
If I could slip away to a place similar to what Lindbergh describes in her essay, I would be able to finish everything and yet, I probably wouldn't. Instead, I would bask in the simplicity of my life, drink in the sheer possibility of living without the distractions of today's "modern 'simplifications," as Lindbergh puts it, and enjoy each passing moment empty of demands to prevail.
Two weeks today, I will be completely finished with this semester. Classes will be done, exams will be over, and sleep will come once more. Though, then I must start Christmas shopping, there is another stressor. Not only does thinking about what to buy people stretch the limits of my coping but also the actual buying process stretches the limits of my bank account.
Then, after Christmas I will once again be back in school twenty-two hours a week, plus preparation classes for my co-operative work terms. The stress of applying for jobs, interviewing for jobs, and worrying about whether I got the job, will definately not put my life in the same category as that of the desired whelk shell life.
Perhaps in three years, when all my schooling is done, and I have a diploma on my wall, I will be able to get away and start the bare essentials life. But wait, then I have to write for real, make contacts, send out work for production, and make a name for myself. Okay, I've figured it out, once I make my first million I will start this life of simplicity.
First though, I've promised to buy tickets for a number of friends to go on a trip to Australia or Africa or someplace like that once I reach the million-dollar mark. Therefore, I cannot start to live simply until after our trip and by then I will be working on my second million and my third and so on. Plus trying to make the world a better place and to open peoples' minds to new ideals.
Well then, when I am ninety and can no longer write or remember how to write I will begin to live simply. All I will need is soup (since I no longer have teeth due to the amount of chocolate and candy I ingest to give myself energy and stay awake), a straw to suck up the soup (since my hands no longer work due to all the writing that I did throughout my life, if they still worked I would still be writing), and an automatic rocking chair (automatic because I don't remember how to make one move manually, because if I could remember I would be dictating to someone else who could write for me.)
So now that I have figured out when I will be able to live simply I can put that one concern behind me and take the next seventy years to live a stressed, tired, and overwhelming life. Keeping the next seventy years in mind, perhaps what I am going through right now isn't all that bad and all I really need is ten days in place of seven and thirty hours in place of twenty-four.