The Experiment

Everyone I know talks about how stressed they are. There is never enough time, always too much to do, if only I had 1 more hour in a day to finish everything! But nobody ever does anything about it. I've been reading nonstop in my classes this semester about how wrong the entire system is, how brainwashed we all are, how much we (the average American) hurt everyone else on Earth by our mere existence. This makes me wonder if there even is anything "we" can do about it. We are programmed our entire lives, at least in my experience, to constantly achieve- even better!- to achieve more than the kid next to you. We are over-scheduled from the age of 3 with sports, music lessons, extra tutoring to get ahead of the curve, "volunteering," on and on and on. We don't eat dinner with our families, and sometimes a meal is merely a microwaved burrito while running out the door to the next activity. All of this just to get a better scholarship to a better school to get a better job to proliferate this cycle with your own unfortunate children. At some point the standards are taken so high that this achievement attitude becomes a norm, and all of this is required just to even get into college.

We're unhappy. Kids get drugged up legally and illegally to deal with their "pain" which is ironically caused by the stuff they do in order to make themselves happy. We eat too much, sleep too little, have panic attacks, and fall asleep at the wheel.

I know these things all too well, because I am the direct product of this cycle. My entire life has been a series of activities and events. I often feel guilty for having fun. My day centers around 4 calendars that run my life. I'm constantly thinking of the most efficient way to get it all done, and the slightest breach of this efficiency is enough to send me into an emotional tailspin for the rest of the day. I had a breakdown at the age of 14 that compromised my immune system but didn't seem to stop the patterns that led to the crisis. My back is chronically in pain and my pelvis is crooked, very likely because of the excessive weight of backpack/violin/swim bag that I carried everywhere during my most formative years and the excessive amount of exercise that I got in general. I developed pathologies of anxiety and OCD. And the problem is that it all worked. I got great scholarship to a great school and continue to achieve through this cycle of self-depravation and self-discipline.

But for all of my focus on efficiency, I feel like I've wasted so much of my life in productivity. I know what really matters, so it's not a matter of finding it. The problem is getting myself to do it. I've got to do something to assuage this guilt that I've already irreparably damaged my body and brain from overloads of stress for too many years.

So here is my plan. I will begin now by chronicling (whenever time allows, always the cruel joke of the matter) the process I have already attempted to undertake of simplifying my life. I no longer feel compelled to read every single word of assignments, to write the most groundbreaking response paper, to attend every single meeting. But I have so much farther to go. The ultimate experience will be when I go abroad in the spring. I am considering my voyage to Vietnam to be an experiment in simpler living. I will have 1 suitcase and will travel for a good portion of the 3.5 months that I am there. I will try to note how it feels to live out of a suitcase, to go without all of the stuff that I "need" so badly, notice if I feel any better or any withdrawal. When I return, I will see how possible it is to apply at home. America is not set up to make simplification easier, and I can't change the world by being 1 person to try this experiment. I just want to see if I can do it.

I know this experiment has been attempted many times before. But I don't think it's been actively analyzed by many people of my generation, the ultimate "stuff" generation.

So here's hoping I can keep up with the task...time to go do more things so I don't have a panic attack!