In today’s materialistic world, there is a horribly misguided view that success is measured by what you have, the size of your house, your job title and paycheck, the car you drive and the clothes you wear. Every year more people file bankruptcy than the prior year because we get caught up in a race we can’t win. Young couples are going into incredible debt to buy the largest, most luxurious house they can. Many of these people after a couple of years haven’t even furnished these oversized boxes of debt and many end up losing them as well as their self esteem when times get rough. We have been conditioned to see ourselves as well as others through the ugly tint of what we have rather than who we are and how we treat each other. I could go on and on about the downfalls of our materialistic world, but the point is made.
The Barbequian philosophy is one of simplification through minimalization. Reality is that what we have, live in, drive or wear have absolutely nothing to do with who we are. The most difficult aspect of Barbequia to embrace and incorporate is reaching a point when you can let go of the need to feed your ego with material possessions and you find comfort in and gratitude for what you have. Many see this as a complacent or mediocre attitude, but it really isn’t once you understand the whole concept.
The lowest comfortable lifestyle is not a Gandhi-spin-your-own-cloth-live-on-a-hippie-commune lifestyle. It is just as it says, finding the lowest comfortable level of lifestyle you are willing to live. If you are fortunate, it is a choice and an on-going process. Sometimes we have little say in the matter and life throws the lowest comfortable lifestyle at us, but either way, it’s still a choice and an ongoing process.
Barbequia itself was born through this very process. Some years ago, I was living in Salt Lake City, UT in a beautiful condominium in a very nice part of town. One day my wife at the time was speaking to a friend in Portland, OR on the phone and she was mentioning how much we missed living in Portland. I heard her say “I’ll talk to Dave and call you back” and she hung up the phone. The next words were “Dave, we need to talk.” Now usually this means I’m in trouble, but somehow this time I knew it was something else. She explained that our friend was interested in moving out of her house and wondered if we would be interested in renting it. The thought of going back to Portland seemed to cloud all judgment and we agreed that it was a good idea. Now I had never seen the house and she had only been there once and didn’t remember that much about it, but we called our friend and agreed to rent her house.
A couple of months later the moving van was pulling up to our new home. I had been told that it was very small, but I didn’t get a figure in square feet. I was ready for a small house, but when we pulled up I quickly realized that the moving van had more square footage than the house and the van was packed to the gills. I had never parked my car in a garage that small, much less lived in a house that small. We had already gotten rid of more than half of our belongings in an effort to scale down, but how we were going to get all our stuff in a tiny little 650 square foot house was a mystery to me. Well, we didn’t – we rented a storage unit and figured out real fast what items were important and what ones were less so. We moved the stuff we wanted into the house and the rest went to a storage unit.
The first week or so was a blurred mixture of culture shock, disbelief and lots of unpacking, arranging, repairing, cleaning, and yes, a few tears. As the weeks went on, and we settled in, we called the place “our little cottage” and we found that not only did we fit quite comfortably, but there was a unique spirit about the place that seemed to give it a personality, so we named the house Simon. I decided to take advantage of this opportunity to start a new life so to speak. Through a myriad of very positive events, the fact that the little house was on the wrong side of the tracks became one of the biggest blessings in our lives. I realized that picking out the belongings that were important to me and getting rid of the rest was as if a huge weight was lifted off me. The more stuff I got rid of the better I felt. I recalled reading in several places including the Tao Te Ching and the writings of Dr. Wayne Dyer about the virtues of letting go of attachments, but I had no idea how wonderfully liberating it was until I actually started to scale down. I was amazed at how much stuff I hauled off to charity that only a few weeks prior as we packed it in the moving van I was sure we couldn’t live without it. Simon for me symbolizes the lowest comfortable lifestyle. Smaller would be impractical (or a tool shed) and larger would be unnecessary. Simon is exactly what Barbequia is all about.
The lowest comfortable lifestyle is a choice because we have to choose to downsize and feed the soul by creating memories or amass more stuff to feed the ego. It is an on-going process because we need to make the choices every day and we may adjust our choices from time to time. There is no right or wrong about it and that’s the beauty of Barbequia – it’s whatever is right for you.
Does this mean that Barbequia is the smallest house in the crappiest neighborhood you can stand? Of course not! My brothers for example have small children at home, which bring other factors into the equation like school districts, neighborhood environment, reliable transportation, etc. So their Barbequia is very different than mine. The Gomez family’s Barbequia was different than mine just as everyone’s will be. The sense of fulfillment and peace comes from the process, not from justifying where you are at currently and calling that Barbequia. All growth requires a bit of pain, but the pain or loss is only temporary while the growth is eternal. So…