Meeting’s Simple Message: Slow Down, Shop Less, Live More

When Sheldon Roth heard that a conference was being held Saturday to promote the virtues of the simple life, he knew he must attend.

“It hit a chord,” said Roth, 60, a college career counselor who recently bought a third car, a Volvo station wagon. “I told myself I would use it to haul around my dog and my family. Except I don’t have a family and the dog had died. And the dog was a Chihuahua; he would have fit in my Miata.”

Roth and about 100 others gathered Saturday for the Mental Health and Simple Living conference at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. The day’s message was that ours is a gluttonous society constipated by its own excesses.

Mental health professionals increasingly have focused on what they say is the growing problem of overconsumption. They see it as a public health concern -- with people literally eating themselves to death -- and as a matter of waste that’s bad for the environment.

In contemporary America, many people are leading increasingly isolated lives and indulging in too much of everything to make up for their loneliness, they say. To pay for all the stuff they’re buying, they’re working killer hours -- which isolates them further.

Laura Fletcher, 34, an emergency room doctor, told the crowd she was the perfect example. Always busy at work, she said she developed a bad habit of buying silk chiffon dresses, which she came to realize were a poor substitute for a social life.

So, she cut back her work schedule and gained time for other things -- such as gardening and seeing friends.

“I have given up recreational shopping,” she told the audience.

The problem, experts said, is that spending gobs of money on unnecessary things doesn’t lead to long-term contentment. Rather, many speakers said, friendships and stimulating experiences are what make people truly happy, if they can find the time.

“People in this culture aren’t having fun,” said Cecile Andrews, a scholar at Seattle University and the author of “The Circle of Simplicity.” “Sometimes I think the high point of our day is crossing something off our to-do list.”

To emphasize the point that people have little time for the important things, she trotted out a favorite statistic: Most couples speak to one another for only 12 minutes a day. It’s only six minutes if one partner has to repeat themselves because the other wasn’t listening.

But how simple is simple enough?

Randy Gold, 48, of Sherman Oaks is a member of the pro-simplicity group Seeds of Simplicity. He said happiness doesn’t require deprivation from, for example, a Double-Double at In-N-Out. He said it’s a matter of people making their own choices instead of letting Madison Avenue do it. “Simplicity is not about a list of things to do or a program to follow,” he said. “It’s not a contest to see who can be simpler. It’s getting people to realize that having more stuff isn’t the answer.”

Living proof of the simple life is Woodland Hills writer George Catlin.

“A long time ago my wife and I discovered we were a lot happier with less things,” said Catlin, who is content with his 1996 Honda. “We found that staying at home and making dinner together, eating it together and cleaning up together was more enjoyable than going to a restaurant.”

Keeping his life sufficiently simple allowed Catlin to save money and retire last year so that he could pursue writing and philanthropy.

Catlin’s age? 51.