Fully Furnished
Fully Furnished
On Our Obsession With Completion & Lack of Love for Process
Driving down the road I pass new sidewalks strewn with dirt from nearby mounds of earth, construction vehicles resting haphazardly over the acres of “undeveloped” Arkansas soil that has been unnaturally tilled, ripped up, piled into small mountains and compacted. Along one side of the road are newly built houses, all thrown up in recent months, all with the same clean, grocery store isle lines and neatly manicured monotone green lawns. Some architects were paid what would be considered “the big bucks” by barista standards to draft and draw those houses and put their names on the blueprints — if actual blueprints are even used anymore. I wonder what color they really are. I wonder how those architects would feel about living in those houses. Do they design better ones for themselves?
FULLY FURNISHED read the signs posted along this construction zone, hoping to entice prospective homebuyers, transplants to everyone’s favorite corner of this unconsidered state in the middle of what seems like the most confused of the superpower nations of the world. Maybe it is. Maybe we’re all more confused than we realize, but we’ve been getting drunk on the culture’s Kool-Aid for too long to notice anymore. It’s easier not to notice, easier to just buy into the game, exchange our own thoughts for the Monopoly money handed to us and buy our new, shoddy, fully furnished homes. Just go with the flow, man.
Maybe this seems like a bleak introduction, but as is usually the case I think there is more behind our everyday societal norms than one can see at first glance. And that sign with the very convenient notice of FULLY FURNISHED new homes caught my attention enough to get me thinking about one of these norms. Perhaps because it’s one that I’ve never had the chance to be a part of, and so the contrast seems rather stark to me, as no doubt it does to most people who’ve lived on a service worker’s salary for a few years. When you live on $25,000 a year, moving into a home that’s already full of stuff feels like walking through an Ikea display. Not quite real. Even if the things are actually there, and actually the same things that you could buy separately over the course of months or years and make use of, seeing it all there packaged and prebuilt and set up just seems off somehow. Because when we walk through Ikea and look at the nice, minimalist, Swedish-designed spaces, we instinctively know that no one’s homes actually look like this. At least not if they actually live there.
Where are the crumbs on the floor that haven’t been swept up yet? Where are the plants asking for a bit more water because you had a busy weekend and missed watering day? Where’s that pile of clean laundry that you took out of the dryer and forgot to put away? Where’s the flour-dusted pantry shelf? Where are the circles on the table from the drinks that sat for too long? Where’s the little spider who lives on the ceiling light? Where are the slightly overripe bananas? Where’s the dreaded but unavoidable junk drawer?
These things are part and parcel of living in a home, and have a way of popping up however tidy a person you may be. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle before one of my dishes reaches the cupboard with greasy fingerprints still on it, yet the pan I cooked yesterday’s soup in is still soaking in the sink. In fact I think there’s something beautiful about these little reminders of home life — because they remind me that it isn’t just a vacuum cleaner that lives here, but a human being. That stock pot in the sink is there because last night I had dear friends over, and after saying a prayer of thanks we sat around the table together and dipped sourdough into our broth and clinked glasses of kombucha while we talked and laughed. Such things are not meaningless mess, but the marks of a life lived well.
Television and movies would have us believe that our houses should be made at right angles and with tidy countertops and whitewashed walls. And many us of believe in such a life, and have decided that having a home that looks like an Apple Store would be a dream. But that sort of thing simply doesn’t attract me anymore, self-proclaimed minimalist that I am.1
I think we are altogether too concerned with reaching the goal. Too concerned with the end of the story, ready to race ahead and read the last page just so we can know what happens and move on. As a child I used to do this, giving in to the frantic urge to flip to the end of the book in my hand and read the closing paragraphs. It was as if I were afraid of the wait, afraid to take the time necessary to live in the story and allow the journey to shape me as it shaped the characters on those pages. I wanted the payoff, but without the work. Though of course I couldn’t have told you so in those words, not at the time.
As I’ve grown, I’ve learned to put away childish urges, like my silly reading habit. I’ve learned (and am still learning) to examine my actions and judge them according to their merit, or lack thereof.
I think in many ways we are like children playing house. We don’t want the arduous journey into adulthood, the painstaking growth of years that enables us to live well and joyfully in the world, to meet our problems head on, to communicate effectively with those around us, to patiently push through the process of formation and watch the transformation take place. We want the fully furnished Ikea display life, to be dropped into the middle of a mundane narrative, as if we’re characters in a television series, without real history, trauma, difficulties and victories. But that isn’t real. It is a counterfeit. And if we find ourselves desiring such a life, we need to wake up and realize that such a false reality has been planted in our minds by advertisers and marketing agents. As much as some would have you believe it, you cannot buy the good life off a shelf.
Maybe you don’t need the shiny new house filled with shiny new things that someone else picked out for you. Maybe an old house full of old things with old stories, built up over time, in good time, would actually be more satisfying. And you can have it, starting right now, if only you open your eyes to what you already have, to what’s been given you. Life and breath and light, and a part in a story much grander than you could tell if you were to try. Because the real thing is always better than we could imagine, and yet, wonder of wonders, it comes to us as a gift, given in grace by a God who only gives good.
While that particular ist doesn’t really describe me all that well, it does serve the purpose of making a succinct point. I will take the time another day to delve into the topic of minimalism, what it means to me, and how I implement it into my own life.