Real Life Minimalists: Cheryl and Roland Magyar

Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words. If you’d like to participate, click here for details.

This week, we have a lovely contribution from Cheryl and Roland Magyar, who’ve been inspired by Nature to pursue a simple and sustainable lifestyle. Please visit their blog to learn more about their homesteading experiences in Hungary.

Cheryl and Roland write:

Cheryl and Roland Magyar we are, a couple in our mid thirties currently living on a farmstead in Southeastern Hungary with Csermely, our wonderful gift from life little daughter in lap.

Especially during the span of the six and a half years of homesteading on our own, very much on our own, we have taken deliberate steps towards not only living, but living a conscious, experiential, intentional and an overall truly fulfilling life.

While doing so, both of us have curtailed many a thing we had each hauled with us to the present as a burden in form of either a misplaced sentimental attachment to the past or very tangible physical clutter that ”belonged to us”.

Cheryl and I have come to firmly believe, that one should never feel enslaved by one’s past. Respect toward our heritage and inheritance can only extend into our current lives as far as it can be kept in line with our continuously evolving principles, which in turn should purposefully become a set of values that is spiritually (ethics included) and materially ever more noble.

As well seasoned soul mates who have already spent eleven years in happy marriage, undergoing our several ups and many downs together, we are fortunate to be very much in tune with each other, having the same career endeavors and goals for the future. The same is true to our tastes – they synergically harmonize.

When I say noble, I mean neither baroque type flamboyance, nor sterile puritanism. We believe both are harmful to the soul: one leads to over indulgence, the other to over abstinence, the result being the same – frustration.

We chose Nature to be our constant inspiration and, of course, each other living in it. See, nature isn’t frivolous and most definitely isn’t frugal.

How this translates to our own human lives? Well, never taking our eyes off the ”muse”, we learn that redundancies are safe, therefore good to have, but too many of them lead to confusion and are counter productive. Our individual needs are different, but with respect to our fellow human beings’ needs and, just as importantly, to all other living organisms, akin the mutual respect that instinctually works within the inter-species relationships of the animate world (not to go any further this time around), we all could have our fulfilling share from the natural bounty.

Nature doesn’t recognize synthetics – only human chemists do.

The realm of nature that is most supportive and fit for human existence surrounds us with organic shapes, but not so-called perfect geometry. It abounds with curves and has virtually no straight angles.

As we are almost ready to give up our present physical livelihood and embark on homestead search anew, the modern pioneers’ way, we decided to basically not take anything material with us other than a loom, two spinning wheels, a cast iron frying pan and a stainless steel spatula, however take everything we have learned and experienced first hand.

If we have enacted stylish eco-simplicity so far, we have found ourselves at the threshold of being able to carry out a life-leap to sustainability through the gateway of eco-minimalism.

So take it away – we are offering it wholeheartedly to you – and peek into our life journey every now and then. Let our inspirations become yours, too at www.handcraftedtravellers.com.

{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}