A Reasonable Life...aka Lets Not Work As Much

In A Reasonable Life by Mate, we hear about how homes in America are turning less into homes and more a place to live. Homes are a place where we should feel safe, happy, and close to our families. The size of the average American home has increased tremendously over the past 50 or so years while the average family size has decreased. What do we need all this extra space for? So we can yell to the other side of the house? And not only do we increase the size, but it comes with a hefty price tag. Homes nowadays cost upwards of $200,000 and when the mortgage is finally paid off you end up paying a lot more than that in interest. Mate discusses how in a time not too long ago that a newly married couple could just go to the edge of town and pick a plot of land and build their house there. The materials to build a house were the only cost. He goes on to talk about how we spend the rest of our lives trying to pay off the mortgage on our house.
I like how Mate takes us to a time when everything was more simplistic and we could be more in touch with nature. If we all could work less and spend more time doing things we enjoy outside, we would all be ten times happier. He makes it seem like the current American dream of getting a good job and a nice house and just working is a pretty gloomy existence. I would tend to agree with his comments. It is sad that our society has turned into such a uniform way of life. There is no way to escape reality in the current time. We could not just go pick a piece of land and decide to build our houses. Life would be ten times easier and more enjoyable.
Mate notes we must take steps to stop hurting our planet, our "mother". He states that we must not regress back in time, but just take steps to make our lives simpler and happier all the while treating our mother earth better. We could all plant home gardens and have fresh fruit and vegetables and save money on our groceries. I really found his way of describing everything in his book. He makes everything very Utopian sounding, but not all of the things he talked about seemed to far-fetched. I appreciated Mate's novel. A reasonable life sounds like a great life that we could all take something from.

Source: "A Reasonable Life" by Ferenc Mate. 1997