ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 9, 1996 TAG: 9604100007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: BABY BOOMERS, MOVIN' ON
SOURCE: KAREN ADAMS STAFF WRITER
WHAT if after struggling to ``have it all'' you suddenly realized that you didn't want it?
Or that the ``ordinary'' life was not only enough, it was more than enough?
Baby boomers, that influential group of Americans born between 1946 and 1964, are looking in the mirror and evaluating their lives like never before. As the first wave hits the half-century mark this year - at the rate of one every 7.5 seconds - many boomers are finding that the things they've worked for just aren't worthwhile.
They're worn out.
Boomers, who make up almost a third of the nation's population, can't make a move without the whole country feeling the ripples. When they rejected the materialistic longings of their parents, it was news. When they changed their minds and embraced those longings - and concentrated on making the money to do fulfill them - it was also news.
Mercedes Benz recently launched an ad campaign aimed at the very group that, 30 years ago, wouldn't have been caught dead in anything fancier than a Volkswagen. In a strange twist, the commercial features the whiskey-voiced Janis Joplin rasping, ``Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz,'' once the anthem of anti-materialism itself.
But maybe the times are a-changin'. After consuming conspicuously for so long, boomers may finally be saying ``enough.''
As they age, the people who vowed to remain forever young are wondering what their legacy will be. Tom Hayden, now a California state senator, said in 1962, ``We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort ... looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.''
Now, with their own children (and in some cases grandchildren) bred in comfort, many boomers are considering the world that they themselves will leave behind.
As a result, many are choosing a simpler life. With economic realities poking them in the ribs and the cold eye of mortality staring them down, voluntary simplicity is becoming a trend. And that, too, is news.
``Our affluence has given us much, but the more we have the hungrier we are and the more we buy," Peggy Noonan, 45 and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, writes in the March issue of New Choices. "We try to assuage our hunger with the beautiful things of the world. ... But the hunger grows.''
Simplify, simplify
``Having it all isn't all it's cracked up to be,'' says Wanda Urbanska, 40. She and her husband, 43-year-old Frank Levering, ditched a full but frantic life in Los Angeles for the serenity of farming in Virginia. The Harvard graduates realized that what was missing from their hard-earned lives was - themselves.
``We didn't have time for each other,'' Levering says. ``We were workaholics, and we had to be.'' In their get-ahead culture, every dinner party was an opportunity. But Levering said there didn't seem to be opportunities for the worthwhile things: each other, community, volunteer work, quiet reflection.
Levering, a screenwriter and free-lance writer, and Urbanska, a journalist and author, decided that to save their marriage, they had to let everything else go.
``We weren't on the verge of divorce, but we really needed to make some changes,'' Levering says.
They made the radical decision to move to Ararat in Carroll County, to the orchard where Levering grew up. It's been in his family since 1908. They now grow cherries, apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and pears. Since their arrival in the late '80s, they've improved the business, their marriage and their lives. They've also written a book about their transformation; ``Simple Living'' was published in 1992. A new book, ``Moving to a Small Town,'' will be out in early June.
Now they have time to spend together and listen to each other. ``There's a feeling that we're on the right track, with a sense of purpose in our lives," Levering says. "We're more philosophically aligned.''
They feel connected to nature and other people, a feeling they didn't experience when they kept a heart-stopping pace.
They live happily with fewer things and fewer commitments; those they do have, they really want.
``Possessions can end up possessing you,'' Urbanska says. ``You have to take care of them.''
She adds, ``There's a lot of pressure, especially for parents, to feed the material engine. As we have less and less time for our children, we have more and more stuff. What they really need is quality time and love, not the latest toy.''
Likewise, less stuff means more time. And these folks are putting theirs to good use.
They volunteer, teach writing classes, listen to the birds and raise good fruit.
They buy used clothing, use the public library, recycle wrapping paper, and dine out only on special occasions. All of this adds up to more meaning in the things they do.
In ``Simple Living'' they say, ``For us, the search for meaning that is a necessary dimension of simplifying one's life need not follow in the footsteps of theology. The quest for a simpler life is itself an infinite journey toward God....''
Now engaged in creating a life rather than simply receiving one, they look to the future with hope, purpose and a renewed sense of spirit. It helps that from their front porch they can see 50 miles of blossoming trees and the green hillsides of the Brushy Mountains.
``You just have to advance on faith that something good will happen,'' Urbanska says.
Simpler way of thinking
Other boomers are changing their lives internally, with the same result: They end up looking at the world differently.
Sarah Ban Breathnach, a ``40-ish'' writer, wife and mother, is the author of the hugely successful book ``Simple Abundance.'' A daily guidebook full of rich observations about life, and written out of the author's own need for intellectual and spiritual nourishment, ``Simple Abundance'' landed on the New York Times best-seller list this week.
By 1991, Ban Breathnach (a Gaelic name pronounced ``Bon Brannock'') had published two books on 19th-century domestic life and had agreed to write a third on Victorian decorative details. But she couldn't get started. ``I was exhausted,'' she says, ``and the thought of ruminating on ruffles and flourishes for a year brought dread to my heart.''
She found all of the commitments in her life - her husband, daughter, ailing mother, home, community, work - wearying. And although she had met many of her goals already, they didn't bring the happiness she sought. To make matters worse, several consulting jobs she had expected dried up in the declining economy; her family went from two paychecks to one.
``I knew I wasn't the only one experiencing this,'' she says. ``I could see it in the faces of my friends, and the women in the cars picking up their children at school.'' She could find no book addressing what she was going through, so she wrote her own.
It changed her life.
``I did not know how I wanted to live,'' she says, emphatically, from her home in Takoma Park, Md. So she stepped back and took a hard look at everything around her.
``One day when I woke up, I was so tired from thinking about the things I didn't have and hadn't done that I told myself, 'OK, just for today, focus on what you do have.' I literally counted my blessings.''
It uplifted her, and she began to do it more and more. She started saying ``thank you,'' and the more she said it the more she saw to be thankful for: the stranger who held her place in the post-office line, the smell of her daughter's hair, the flower blooming outside her door.
Now when she wakes each morning she gives thanks for the day ahead. ``Thoreau said that the highest art is affecting the quality of the day,'' she says.
Ban Breathnach lists six principles for living well: gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty and joy. The place to start is gratitude, she says, and everything happens from there.
The desire to pare down comes next, she says, and we can do it by declining a commitment here and there. We can also let go of many possessions. (``What you need is reliable transportation, not a BMW,'' she says.)
Every day she hears from people who say that by letting go of frenzied activity and desperate consumption they've regained time, direction, peace of mind and sanity - in short, their lives.
Ban Breathnach opens her book with a quote from poet Louise Bogan: ``In a time lacking in truth and certainty and filled with anguish and despair, no woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart.''
``I think we were all born to return something to the earth,'' Ban Breathnach says.
This is one in a series of occasional stories about Baby Boomers and the issues they're facing. If you have a story idea for this series, please e-mail Karen Adams at extraroanoke.infi.net or call her at 981-3324.
LENGTH: Long : 175 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. File/1992. Frank Levering's and Wanda Urbanska'sby CNBCarroll County orchard: In ``Simple Living'' they say, ``For us, the
search for meaning that is a necessary dimension of simplifying
one's life need not follow in the footsteps of theology. The quest
for a simpler life is itself an infinite journey toward God....''
color. 2. A vision of the good life from the 1950s: ``Our affluence
has given us much, but the more we have the hungrier we are and the
more we buy," says Peggy Noonan, 45 and former speechwriter for
Ronald Reagan. B&W. 3. File/1992. ``Having it all isn't all it's
cracked up to be,'' says Wanda Urbanska, 40. She and her husband,
43-year-old Frank Levering, ditched a full but frantic life in Los
Angeles for the serenity of farming in Virginia when they moved to
Ararat in Carroll County. color. 4. (headshot) Sayah Ban Breathnach.
Graphic: Chart: What price affluency? color.