PEBC: On Change...Not So Big and Bird by Bird

And so we begin Prairie’s Eclectic Book Club.

Change is much in the wind these days. The weather is changing…storms batter places they’ve never visited before. The WGA strike has changed teevee programming. Tired of winter we look forward to the change in seasons, reading our garden catalogues. The economy is changing—interest rates going down, down, down instead of up. Even though Just go shopping as a solution to everything from 9/11 to the 2007 Christmas doldrums just isn’t making it any more.

We are a country hungry for change. You can see it in the crowds drawn to Obama appearances. You can read it in the blogs educating us about the issues the MSM leaves out or gives scant shrift or spin to…and building vibrant online communities in the process.

The political landscape is going through a titanic shift these days, and about time doing it. We are looking for new leaders, we are looking for rebuilding, we are looking for restoration of the sturdy foundations of the nation.

But how can we expect such great change unless we are willing to change within ourselves? If we remain unchanged, will anything around us truly change?

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

The architect Sarah Susanka named a way of thinking about homes in her seminal book, The Not So Big House, and in the process of describing that concept, she gave voice to a restless rebellion against the McMansioning of our lives. The overbuilt, overblown, grandiose grotesqueries all the more silly for being plunked down on teeny-tiny plots of ground.

Her masterstroke was the away space. Be it a room, a nook, a corner, a closet, the away space is respite from the hectic, cluttered, frazzly parts of a house where most of the time the living takes place. A porch where you can sit and contemplate the birds at the feeders, a shelf where treasured tokens carry you to faraway places, a room totally bare but for a mat where you can sit and meditate… the away space is yours to define and find.

At this time when ’most everyone says they want change, how will we get there? It starts within, and Susanka has taken the building/remodeling concepts of her world of architecture and put them in a new frame that we all can use: The Not So Big Life.

Just as the series of Not So Big House books bring us to a new way of looking at and living in our homes, The Not So Big Life is a handbook for remodeling—changing—our lives.

And as with any remodeling, there is the blueprint, what will be the right structure…for me? How do I—and you—look at self and decide what needs changing, what’s worth keeping, what’s just clutter needing casting away?

There are a bazillion self-help books on the market, a bazillion guides to self-improvement. Susanka brings a freshness to the subject by putting us in the context of the place where we live and guiding us through looking around and taking stock…of our home and our heart.

Bird by Bird

And if you’re not new wave, and change seems too daunting, no matter how much you feel it resonate. If you feel a bit of “buyer’s remorse”—if you worry that maybe change is just “hoo-hah” as Medusa Matalin would like you to believe, then meet another wise woman: Anne LaMott. Her iconic book Bird by Bird transcends its Instructions on Writing…to become a nurturing guide to life. And right now, in the pivotal time of change when change comes with its own hobgoblins gibbering to push us back to status quo, we need just such a reminder that change, improvement, remodeling, rebuilding comes step by step, day by day, bird by bird.

Will it be the right change, we wonder, as we go thru the primary process and leaf through the seed catalogs. Hosta or hydrangea? Democrat or Republican? Two-story or rambler? Red state or blue?

Oooh, the hand-wringing potential, the obstacle building we can set up for ourselves if we let go of hope and promise and let somebody tell us change is “hoo-hah.”

But you know what, you are just you, and I am just me, and if we get it wrong, we can still work toward getting it right again. If we are willing to change.

PRAIRIE NOTE: We’re workin’ on change around here, too. Soon we’ll have links to where you can buy these books—for you and your library, just sayin’—but in the meantime, please support your local indie bookstore whenever possible.