Moratorium!

by Wade Wiebe

I noticed a few years back that I was buying my clothes faster than I was wearing them out. That is, I was buying a new shirt or pants before what I was wearing was ready to be cut into rags. Eventually, clothes were just piling up. I kept buying new (to me) clothes, so that I always had that crisp, bright look of a new piece of clothing. But the effect was ridiculous. I had hangers and drawers full of “work” clothes that I intended to use when gardening but really – when was I going to wear all this?  So, I declared… a MORATORIUM!

This was a self-imposed ban on buying any clothes before a corresponding item was permanently retired (which, for me, meant unwearable even as garden-clothing.) Gradually, I managed to get my clothing more or less into balance without discarding clothes prematurely. For me this solution was ideal, because it did not allow me another option other than to stop doing what I had considered normal. What I had gotten accustomed to was the problem.

“Stopping doing” is not intuitive. In fact it can be quite hard in a culture which emphasizes active, technological solutions. But putting a halt to something is sometimes the only way to make a lasting, paradigm-shifting difference. The fastest, cheapest and most effective solution to almost every problem of over-consumption and environmental degradation is to simply… stop.

What makes a moratorium special is its absoluteness. Once you’ve made the decision, all that’s left is to live by your new terms. There’s something liberating about the way a clear, well thought-out limit brings other, previously unacceptable options into a new light. Without such a limit, each decision must be weighed against a variety of competing interests (cost, convenience, social pressure etc.). But the clarity of a limit eliminates many of these competing interests entirely. It just is what it is.

This was not the first moratorium we’ve declared our household. Several years ago we placed a moratorium on buying non-local food. I have described experience in a previous column. The effects were positive and long-lasting, and I’m convinced we wouldn’t have followed through in the absence of a firm resolution. Moratoriums are often set in place only for a fixed period of time. In our case, the self-imposed ban lasted a year, but after the year was over, we felt confident and happy to make significant lasting changes. In effect, we had adjusted to a new reality, we liked it, and we decided to keep the changes.

A moratorium is normally associated with laws imposed by an outside authority. These are frequently unpopular because the people affected by the moratorium may be required to make difficult, costly sacrifices; consider the cod fisheries of Newfoundland. But a self-imposed moratorium is a different thing. It’s difficult, yes – but it’s easier to accept, even freeing – when it’s done by your own volition. Sometimes the only way to solve something, is not to find a way around it, but to stop what you’re doing altogether.