A Lesson From Grammy: Simplicity

What have we come to? I’m seriously asking. How have we come to this point in our society? In our human race? We seem to be falling apart. We’re all either too stressed and a mess, or we’re self-medicating to cope with it … and a mess. We’re all so angry and confused and uncertain and uncomfortable.

I keep thinking about Grammy (that’s my husband’s grandmother). She died from COVID just a few months shy of her 100th birthday. Grammy was such a simple soul. And when I say “simple,” I don’t mean in the (probably politically incorrect) cognitive sense. I mean that she lived a simple life. Simple as fuck.

Grammy lived in a small town in New Jersey. She listened to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole CDs. She watched The Lawrence Welk Show on PBS. She raised three boys who grew into men who married women who had two or three kids each. She had three great-grandchildren. There’s a fourth one on the way.

Grammy was devoted to her faith. She had utmost trust that whatever happened, good or bad, was part of a bigger plan, and that God was always watching over us. She was a seamstress. She liked to dance. She was a spitfire and a firecracker and any other fire-related personality trait. She was just … content.

And here I am, jealous of the weather in Australia. Why do I even know about the weather in Australia? Why do I care? Why is it on my radar? Because I follow Celeste Barber on Instagram and I noticed they’re wearing longer sleeves now. In January, they were in tank tops and shorts.

Part of me finds this utterly fascinating. The fact that I even can follow along with an Australian comedian’s life is a technological marvel. Technology has certainly been our friend in that way during the COVID crisis. Everything’s shut down, but we can still “see” each other virtually.

And yet…

I am getting a growing sense that it’s just not good for me. For any of us, really. What started out as a wonderful way to stay connected has morphed into Keeping Up with the Joneses on steroids. Because the Joneses aren’t just our neighbors anymore. They’re potentially everyone. Everywhere. If I can be jealous that Celeste Barber is enjoying 65-degree days and sweater-weather at night, where does it end? Where do those tiny micro-underminings stop?

I don’t think they do. I think they go on and on and on until we wake up one day and feel fundamentally Not Enough. And we don’t know why, and we can’t pinpoint it, because it isn’t any one thing. It’s millions of tiny things that have added up to this.

I am irrationally angry at digital “connectedness.” At (anti)social media. At the sheer volume of information and input that assaults my eyes, ears, nose, and skin every single day. And then I think of Grammy. She unwittingly protected herself from all of these things by living simply. By not concerning herself with things that were outside her locus of control.

Grammy didn’t care that Celeste Barber wore sweaters in July. It wasn’t on her radar. And — this is perhaps the most important point — that didn’t make Grammy a bad person. We have this idea now that if we aren’t involved in every single aspect of every single person’s life, we’re careless. Callous. Complicit in The Problem. (Don’t get me started on The Problem — you know, that concept that is completely different for everyone, and yet each iteration of it demands our full attention?)

I’m wondering now if disconnecting from the world is the answer. Because if we all stopped trying to pay attention to everything, and instead paid attention to what was right in front of us at any given moment, maybe that would be enough collective effort to actually make an impact.

Simplify. Focus. Butterfly effect the fuck out of life.

I can hear you through my laptop screen — you’re worried that if we disconnect from the world, the world will go to shit. If we “turn our backs” on all the world’s problems, they will exponentially grow. But what if the opposite happened? What if focusing on our personal microcosms for a bit actually recharges us enough to do something about the bigger problems? What if what we’re all feeling is a collective burnout, and what we need is a collective break?

I’m not diminishing the world’s problems. War and sex trafficking and kids in cages and famine and poverty are very real issues. But if humanity is burned out, we can’t do anything about those issues. If the micro-underminings of our attention, energy, and creativity leave us with nothing left in the tank to tackle the bigger issues, that is the real problem.

Maybe Grammy understood all of this. Maybe she, on some level, realized that if she spent 30 seconds here and there turning her attention to a handheld computer to see what someone in London had for dinner that day, or what new mug someone in Jakarta just bought, or what stupid thing the idiot politician du jour said, she wouldn’t have the reserves left to do what she was put on this planet to do. Maybe Grammy had it right without realizing it.

Maybe if we were all a little more like Grammy, we would all be a lot more content. And productive. And human.

Maybe if we were all a little more like Grammy, we could save the world by saving ourselves.