The beauty of living in relative poverty.

It doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s working for me at the moment. I’m lucky, I come from a middle class background. I received a good education, both at school and at a wonderful University in London. It is from this perspective that I make the statement seen in the title.

          Where to start? There is an inherent beauty and paradoxical freedom of living with very little money. One’s perception of  ‘value’ changes. Perceptions on the world and what really matters change. Pressure is lifted. Indeed, relative poverty can be empowering without compromising dignity. Embracing the fact of having little money can also change feelings of envy. Relative poverty forces us to realise that people and not material things are what matter. Interaction, love, compassion, observation, reflection are the things that matter, not consumption.

In the last 6 months I have earned very little money and I have had to change my life accordingly. I have never earned a lot of money, but this period has been a particularly economically lean period. It hasn’t always been easy to pay the rent or even to buy everyday necessities. It is in these circumstances that I’ve started to realise what I really need and indeed want. The result? I don’t think I’ve ever felt more content.

The economic power of a family or a person clearly matters. It can make the difference between eating healthily and having an education. However, our culture of consumerism which is all pervasive, has intensified the gap between the rich and the poor. We have become hardwired to want. It disempowers people by fostering a feeling of shame if you don’t have the ability to consume. If we wrestle free of the compunction to consume, we can free our minds and can concentrate on what really is important to us as human beings. People purchase things that in reality are not good for them, they stunt their growth as human beings. Envy and disillusionment is a destructive force. It is something that is nurtured by advertising companies and corporations to increase profits.

Clearly purchasing things is a necessity of everyone. A £5,000 handbag or buying a pair of trainers for £500 pounds (when it is probably produced in a sweatshop for £5) is most definitely obscene. I enjoy purchasing things sometimes, but things of use. I find genuine pleasure in buying a notebook or a good kitchen knife. Quality things that we can use for craft are simply not valued. Rather we spend thousands of pounds on disposable things or machines that create virtual life, not something real. People throw away things unnecessarily, I would happily accept or readily use things that people deem to be deserving of the bin.

Finding pleasure in small, seemingly insignificant things can be all the more beautiful. My favourite cup, a blanket someone gave me that I cuddle up with on the sofa, a pen that I have treasured for many years yet cost only 50p. Even things that are not tangible are so valuable; smiles, laughs, music, conversation. Ipads, music players, phones, cameras have served to narrow our minds and ignore the real world. We are so focused on these devices and what they are giving us we don’t look at each other, listen to each other, know each other or see the world around us. Indeed, if we do see the world around us it is through the lens of a camera and not our eyes. There is so much beauty in the world, wonderful words, kindness, happiness, the nature and we complicate our lives so much that we can miss these things.

While wealth can give us power it can also disempower us as individuals. Wealth can cause us to ignore our responsibilities. If we break something we can buy a new one. If we lose something we can buy a new one. If we can’t do something we pay someone else to do it. Take childcare for instance; wealth more and more often has served to damage the lives of wealthy families. Indeed, some parents try to buy the love of their offspring and pay strangers to come into their house to act as a substitute mother or father. Poverty on the other hand can help us discover new skills and knowledge that others might simply pay others for. People who bear their own responsibility for fixing and building their own things have reach incredible levels of ingenuity and innovation to achieve what they want. It is a sad fact that affluence and consumerism have turned us into a wasteful and throwaway. We have forgotten that the waste must go somewhere.

The poor damage the planet least. I have reached a point where despite a profound love of meat, I eat it on average twice a week. Countries where poverty is dominant consume dramatically less meat than other countries. Industrial meat production is not only damaging to the planet but also fails to respect the animal which will be sacrificed to fill our stomachs. A reduced meat diet is also good for our health.  Coffee provides me with my only vice. Alcohol and cigarettes no longer figure in my life, mostly because of choice but also in part because I can’t afford them. We simply don’t need them and take us away from what is really important, which is living our life.

I was in a poorly paid job, I am now self-employed and earn even less. I occasionally sub-contract myself, but I am now in control. I am poorer but freer. The combination of poor pay, mixed with a feeling of being exploited is a dangerous concoction. Take control of this situation and therein lies satisfaction. I earn less but have more time to think, more time to cook, more time to create, more time to reflect, more time to see what is happening. Unfortunately, business and the commercial world relies on taking us under the yoke. People are working more and being paid less. Combine this with their need to force people to want and to consume and there is another dangerous concoction. Sportsmen and women are often criticised for the amount of money they earn, but in reality that’s not why they do it. They play or do their sport for the love of it. When a Formula One driver is driving around the circuit he thinks of nothing else other than being the best and doing what he enjoys. He would probably do it for nothing.

Having said the above, I want two things. I want to leave Barclays (whom I despise) and I want a dog. Having very little money, while not always easy is, not always bad.