Amish

Amish Lifestyles

People live in simple farmhouses. Family members, including small children, all work in the fields. Crops are planted and harvested without modern farm technology.

Most Amish people are easy to recognize. The women make their own long, dark-colored dresses. They cover their hair with white cloth hats, called prayer caps. They do not wear jewelry. The men grow long beards. They wear black clothing and dark hats. The Amish live much like their ancestors did. Modern things like electricity, central heating and indoor water pipes are not considered necessary. The Amish do not drive cars. Instead, they travel in buggies pulled by horses.

The Amish heat their houses with wood stoves. And they get their water from wells.
Many Amish people do not use the telephone. They do not want to be connected to the outside world. But some earn money by cooking lunch or dinner for visitors. Visitors can join a family for a meal that includes meat, potatoes and vegetables grown on their farms. If the guests have any room left in their stomach after all that, they can have a sweet, rich dessert.

Advantages

The advantage of an Amish lifestyle is that life is very simple and is not as fast as those in big cities right now. People enjoy doing the things they do and are not stressed like those who are living in big cities. Also, people are closely-knitted together with such a simple lifestyle because having a complicated lifestyle involving many things to do in a day may cause inequality between people and thus affect their relationship.

Disadvantages

Their lifestyle is very hard to live by as they lack transport and communication tools. They travel in buggies pulled by horses, which makes their journey becomes longer and takes up more time. They are also disconnected from outside their community. They do not have computers or any other communication tools to connect with the outside world. They also do not have electricity so it will be quite hard for them when they read or write or when they want to cook.

Opinion

Although Amish lifestyle is very peaceful, I think that I have already lived in Singapore for 13 years and Singapore has a very competitive society. Our people cannot live the type of lifestyles that Amish live. Without technology, we cannot survive, especially when we survive on high-technology these days. It would be good to live the Amish for a day or two, but it is very hard to do it every day.