My dryer broke yesterday—out of nowhere. I plopped two wet tablecloths and loads of sodden dishtowels into its pockmarked basin, clicked the knob to extra dry, pushed the button, and… nothing.
I checked the plug, the outlet, the robot looking tube snaking out its back, clicked the circuit breaker back and forth, did it again, and… nothing.
The house became my clothesline, my banisters and kitchen chairs draped with checks and stripes and quilted cloth when my friend arrived for a visit and proclaimed it all so charming.
“Oh,” I said, “My dryer broke.”
“You know,” she said, “I think that dryers are optional.”
It’s true. As I folded their naturally starched edges into crisp little rectangles, I thought about how easy the hanging out—the gathering done quickly while my linens laid in plain sight, not hidden for me to discover in a metallic hollow, and I thought another thought: of how needless the dryer.
Convenient? Oh, so, totally. But necessary? Not on this Tuesday I guess.
***
My sister has this theory. It’s a free-formed theory that I’ve (very creatively) decided to call the banana theory. And it goes something like this:
Heavenly Father created the perfect snack for us when he made the naturally encased, nutritious and sustaining pale yellow banana: portable, full of good stuff, easy. And yet, some genius still went and invented the banana-flavored energy bar.
Why? Seems we sullied up something lovely and divine for a man-made, chemically packaged counterpart.
***
My children watched Swiss Family Robinson last night because I’ve always wanted them to see the cleverness of that tree house! Weighted buckets and ladder like stairs, a moon roof cut from palm thatches, the way water dances and climbs— from river to wheel to cup to barrel— and dumps from suspended bucket to tortoise shell sink.
Indeed the kids loved it. And their minds brimmed with the possibilities of our four huge backyard trees, and fantastic inventions were conceived even as they were spoken, so exciting and so… basic, if you thought about it.
The amazing to my children would be swapping roof for dark night, and sleeping under stars. The impossible dream would be moving away from all our plug-ins to open-air walls and candle lit evenings to the tune of a cricket chirp, a rustle of wind.
Something primal draws them out; something in that Swiss Family Robinson (oh, adaptable as they were) drew them in—pushed them to create a home laden with the notion of “modern” convenience.
***
Adaptation is the glory of progress: to make it simpler, to make it quicker, to make it more efficient, to make it better.
But do we always make it better?
Or do we create an intricate system of cogs and wheels and chemicals that do the same job as the divinely conceived original?
Are we spinning our wheels to reinvent the wheel?
In the Robinson family tree house, they have bamboo-plumbed running water right next to a running river. In my house I have a dryer, surrounded by length of stair rails and arid heat, and frequently choose the packaged over the fresh. We drive when we could walk, and buy when we could grow, and {{{hug}}} when we should really seek a friend out… and hug.
And amidst all of this we tend to bemoan our anxiety and pine for simplicity. We want to reconnect with nature at the same moment we build up a wall (so we carve a window). Something in us seeks the unsullied natural experience while we GPS our way into outdoorsy adventure. I’m not saying this is wrong—I am certain Heavenly Father inspires the capable to create, cure and invent, and I love convenience and frivolity probably more than you and still marvel at the memory of not knowing (at six years old) that I couldn’t see and getting glasses and suddenly, the trees each had feather leaf! The foothills outside my backyard were covered in long grass! The world was solved and curved pieces of glass across my nose were a gift from God.
Indeed progress and invention are good.
But when simplicity is harder to come by, and we must seek it out and create it because of the convenient society we live in, does some of this betterment become a moral question?
Is it okay to do something just because you can? Should we invent something because we can? Should we buy it because we can? Is convenience too convenient?
What has been your experience with going back to basics?
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