Margin

Richard A. Swenson, M.D. circa 1948-

Read 2001 January 9 – March 16

Reviewed 2001 April 20

This book was recommended and sold by the Friesen’s at Family Camp, summer 2000. They carry their own stock around. I went to the Campus By the Sea bookstore and picked up the last copy. Another camper was there looking for it. In retrospect, I should have given her mine and added this title to my amazon.com “wish list.” That’s what I would do today, due to my better understanding of simplicity and margin applied to my own gazingus pins. I use the “wish list” to keep track of things that I might buy if I had time to use them. (The existence system used to be the book or item itself.) But, I did read this book less than a year from purchase.

All this is relevant because the instruction of Margin itself is to have slack in the four dimensions of life: emotional, physical, time, and finances. People were made to have slack in their lives for rest, reflection, and wisdom. Staying at high pressure all the time, something many of us can envision, if not achieve, is not healthy and it is not “living” and has dangerous consequences individually and for society.

Swenson blames lack of margin on relentless progress; the quest for greater ease and higher standard of living has become a trap, actually a set of traps. It’s what I call “the washing machine problem.” The washing machine, at cost of automatic use of resources, greatly simplified the task of having clean clothes. An unexpected result, however, was that we now have an expectation of clean clothes every day rather than every week, the old standard. Now, if the washing machine were used to support the old standard of cleanliness, it would indeed have bought us some slack in time and energy of life maintenance (though perhaps not enough to justify the capital purchase), but it has, rather, increased the standard beyond it’s own improvement in efficiency. Bottom line, we are all now slaves to the washing machine and, what’s worse, if the machine goes down, we don’t know how to go back to “once a week.” Pew!

It is hard to think of a technology (including the computer that I’m writing this on) that doesn’t fit into this category, and this is the reason why “simplicity” is not “easiness.” Just consider the automobile, home mortgages, the telephone, the electric light, the television…. One actually has to work upstream against the demands and expectations of culture in order to free oneself from any of this slavery. (Perhaps the refrigerator and indoor plumbing are counter examples, but even so, they make us fat and lazy but in so doing, prevent us from being killed by various forms of duress. It’s not an easy problem, to achieve balance in this environment.)

This railing against progress gets nearly to apocalyptic proportions in the early “The Problem” portion of the book. Even the Campus By the Sea reviewer discounted much of this hand wringing, saying that most of the useful information was towards the middle. He makes “progress” graphs and shows how they are no longer linear but exponential, then warns against the problems of maxing out. When I look at the graphs, I can’t tell from inspection that they are exponential, as the author claims, or linear or just what they are. There are many graphing tricks that can use to conjure one’s desired conclusions out of data. Some of the graphs aren’t fair, things like “miles traveled.” Well, sure, that’s grown exponentially, at least up until now. If they’d had jet travel in Jesus day, it would have stabilized a long time ago.

This alarmism is summed up in the four “The Problem: Pain” chapters: The Pain(s) of Progress, Problems, Stress, and Overload.” While disagreeing with his assessment methodology and emphases, I don’t disagree that there are problems of overload and stress. I have them myself. Why else would I be at Family Camp buying a book called Margin, or interested in other books about simpler living or having “enough” in the financial picture (but not too little or too much)?

Part two is “The Prescription: Margin” and this is where the useful information is. The doctor’s prescription is specific advice in each of the four areas: Emotional Energy, Physical Energy, Time, and Finances, about how to re-establish and maintain margin in order to have a fuller life. “More is less,” as they say. These prescriptions range through the normal dietary and sleep advice, things like date night, exercise, saying “no” and living within means. I’ll keep Margin on my shelf as a reference for these advices.

At the end, the author adds a third section “Prognosis: Health” with chapters on Contentment, Simplicity, Balance, Rest, and a summary. Though challenging (like the call to not-easy simplicity for example), these chapters are somehow forgettable, at least in the month since I read them. The basic premise of the book, that our current culture lacks margin and is worse off for it (with valid examples) is a good one. The basic division of life categories is a useful one and the advice is largely sound. While on my shelf, Margin will be available for loan to people in similar situations.