This I Believe—Less is More
By Sam McCready

I believe less is more. In a society dominated by consumerism, I believe that the less we have, the happier we are likely to be. As the great poet William Wordsworth observed,
‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
I first came to the US in the early 1980s to direct a play in New York. I was wined and dined and treated at times like minor royalty. I had lunch in the Russian Tea Rooms, I partied with Allan Jay Lerner who wrote My Fair Lady, I attended the 50th Birthday Party at the Hamptons for a director of American Steel, I sat in an apartment on Park Avenue while the hostess had conversations with Greta Garbo on the telephone. And I directed Kevin Spacey before he found film fame. I was on a roll.
The play was an artistic success and we expected it would transfer to a larger New York theatre. While I was waiting for this to happen, a friend suggested that I should apply for an American Green card. I had no plans to stay in the US—I had a family and a perfectly good life in Ireland--but the Green Card would enable me to return to the US to direct whenever I wanted, I thought. It could be useful. And so I gave an Immigration lawyer a couple of thousand dollars to arrange it. ‘You’ll have no problem,’ she said.
At about the same time as my application was submitted to the Immigration Service, plans to remount my theatre production fell through and I decided to go home. I told the Immigration lawyer I was going back to Ireland and to send me the Green Card when it arrived. ‘No, you can’t leave the US,’ she advised. ‘If you leave the US, the application will be invalidated. You gotta stay.’ ‘How long will it take?’ I asked. ‘Two, three months. Maybe less.’ ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I won’t go home.’
I was now out of a job and I had nowhere to stay. I had very little money: Joan was still in Belfast taking care of our two sons and most of the money we had went for their upkeep. Like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, I was dependant on the kindness of strangers. I hung around for a while expecting some millionaire I had dined with only a few weeks earlier to give me her penthouse and an allowance. Neither was forthcoming. Finally I got a temporary job at a very low hourly rate with a NY publisher, and friends allowed me to sleep on a cot in their living room. I couldn’t afford the subway, so I walked to and from work through Central Park and down Fifth Avenue (about an hour each way) and I rationed myself to one cheap meal every day--and lots of water. It was a very different lifestyle from anything I had been accustomed to in Ireland. I lost weight, I felt I was a burden on friends, and above all, I missed Joan and the family; I was very much alone.
But something was happening—a sort of metamorphosis, if you will. I had been accustomed for most of my adult life to teaching students, directing actors, taking control, giving the orders. I was naturally outgoing and loquacious. By contrast, in my low-paid office job, I assumed a very low profile. I was a nobody in the office and I played the role of nobody. I smiled at everyone, said good morning to everyone, held the door for everyone, then put my head down and worked and worked. I didn’t take lunch (I was being paid by the hour) and I didn’t lift my head until it was time to leave. Apart from the fact that I was Irish, the others in the office knew nothing about me—and nobody chose to ask. But slowly the most interesting phenomenon occurred—the other clerks would come to my desk, one by one, lean over, and confide in me the latest office gossip, their emotional hang-ups, their dreams: sometimes they confided in me the most intimate details of their personal lives, details that I don’t even think they shared with their psychiatrist. Why? Was it because I was not perceived as a threat, that I was a nobody--some dumb old guy (I was only forty five) who had managed to find his way to America, lived alone, hadn’t much money, and was going nowhere? I grew to love that role—the secret sharer. And what a relief it was to feel I didn’t have to talk all the time—I could just listen! In my first weeks in NY I had looked in the shop windows and fantasized about all the wonderful things I would buy to take home to Ireland—crystal from Tiffany’s, fine paintings and prints from many of the NY galleries (I loved modern art), and of course, clothes from Lord & Taylor--new shirt, new shoes, a colorful tie. Now as I passed these shops each day on my way to and from work, I rarely looked near them. The very sight of the window displays bored me—disgusted me, even. I had no money to buy anything and so it was a waste of time looking in windows. More importantly, I was losing the desire for worldly possessions—I saw them merely as encumbrances, one more thing to take care of and worry about. I was in the process of freeing myself from unnecessary responsibilities. I needed nothing but the bare necessities and it felt good. If I needed entertainment, I could look at the people around me, and if I wanted to see art I could go to the wonderful art museums. It was an empowering experience.
In my walks through Central Park, I followed the seasons: from the clear, warm days of autumn, with the trees showing off their spectacular reds and golds, to the first winter snow which lay virgin white and crisp in the early morning light. The winter cold froze me to the bone. I got to know almost every tree and branch, and the squirrels (a novelty to us in Ireland) became so familiar I almost gave each a name. And on these walks through the park I would lose myself in my thoughts, finding a degree of calm and inner peace I had never before experienced in adult life. Like Thoreau, I created my very own Walden Pond--but in the center of New York--and like Thoreau I reached towards the transcendental and spiritual. I felt Christ walked with me on those journeys, encouraging me to get rid of what was worthless and distracting in my life so that I might concentrate on what was really important--my wife, my family, the search for fulfillment and inner peace—the kind of peace that passes understanding.
In Fifth Avenue, the sight of so many panhandlers distressed me. I turned away so as not to see. But one day I had change in my pocket--it wasn’t very much, a few pennies—but it was all I had. On a whim, I gave it to a panhandler on the corner of Fifth Avenue. He took it gruffly but the pleasure I received from giving made me almost dizzy and if my pockets had been filled with gold coins I would have showered them on everyone in sight. I continued to give everyday after that because in giving I was receiving—the warmth and support of true friends (not the hangers on I had met when I first arrived in New York), the love of my family in Ireland, the experience of living in a diverse community in the most vibrant of cities, and the presence within me of a deeply spiritual force. I walked in light.
I spent eight months in New York before I was appointed to UMBC and came to live permanently in Baltimore. When I compare the two experiences I have described, the feasting when I arrived in New York and the austerity of those final eight months, which do you think I remember most vividly? Those final months. With those final eight months I achieved a spiritual state akin to childhood (and mine was a very happy one), a pure state before it was polluted by fear, greed, lust, envy and self-promotion.
All I have described happened many years ago. Despite the best of intentions, I’ve lost touch with much I realized during those short months. As Wordsworth says, ‘the world is too much with us.’ But I know that the only way for me to be truly happy is to get back to that blissful state—and each day I try to take another step towards achieving it. Less is more. Incidentally, that Immigration lawyer never got me the Green Card.