Cynthia
(Tatman '86) and Walter Breitinger '74 are proud of a list they keep of things
they don't want. Marked with a highlighter are things they don't have.
They have no air conditioner, no VCR, no electric razor, no dishwasher, no snow blower or leaf blower.
It's not the money. Walt has a good job and was recently promoted. The Breitingers are thoroughly modern, well-educated people. They prefer to live simply, to use less.
With that goal in mind, Walt has pledged that within the year he will travel round-trip from his home in Valparaiso to his commodities broker job in Merrillville, 10 northwest Indiana miles away, without using gas. At present, he can make it halfway.
Within the year, he and his family have vowed, they will shut off their electricity for a week, maybe a month, just to see if they can do it, just to remind themselves of how much they use. Last summer, as a small step in that direction, they kept records for a time to evaluate their use of their television set.
The ultimate goal, Walt says, would be to live without cars, refrigeration, indoor plumbing, and other "mechanized stuff." But he's practical and recognizes that's a theoretical goal. Yet he knows the value of stepping stones, so he has a list.
"It has nothing to do with depriving myself of anything or giving up any happiness," he says. "I don't see it as requiring sacrifices. It's just going to require freeing up and weaning ourselves from all this conditioning we have here."
He's referring to the commercials and ads that promise consumers they'll be smarter, more sophisticated, happier if they buy a new car, a bigger TV, a more powerful stereo.
"Intellectually, I don't believe it, but I've been conditioned to believe it and it's very, very hard to break it. I feel like I'm hooked on heroin, and I know I'll lead a better life and be happier if I can kick it."
He has spent the better part of 20 years working at it with varying degrees of success. In the late 60s, he bought a foreign car with a small engine in an effort to conserve gas. Someone looked at the 1200 cc engine and said, "My motorcycle has a bigger engine than that." It probably ran better, too.
"That car was a disaster," says Walt. "I couldn't get parts for it, and it cost me 10 times more to maintain. I gave up and went to an American car."
Cindy managed to get along nicely without a car for years, walking to town or riding a bike to the hospital where she works, now part time, as a cardiac nurse.
"I don't like cars. I have never liked cars. They give me no pleasure, not to drive, or to look at," she said. "I guess I sometimes considered them a necessary evil. The thought of being able to exist without one is very pleasant."
Living the simpler life - where wants are products of necessity and not of Madison Avenue - need not be as difficult as it sounds. And more and more people are choosing to do it. It doesn't mean living to extremes or going without. It's not an absolute. It means making choices you can live with. You may have many of the things others have, but you use them differently. You consume less by altering and diminishing your use.
Robert "Biker Bob" Reinhardt, a friend of the Breitingers and a junior nursing student at Valparaiso University, says the decision to live simply is about more than conserving gas. It's about virtues. The virtues of reading a book instead of watching a box, of playing an instrument instead of playing the stereo, of reaching out instead of reaching back.
Adds Walt, "I like to believe that the person I respect the most doesn't have the biggest house, the biggest car, the most clothes, the most appliances, but knows how to play the most instruments, know the classics, knows poetry, knows how to speak many languages, knows how to wear his clothes for years instead of weeks, and knows how to conserve rather than spend."
Duplicated with the permission of Valparaiso University.
